Increase of 180,000 would leave Russian army second only to China in terms of number of active combat soldiers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the country’s military to increase its troop numbers by 180,000 to a total of 1.5 million active servicemen in a move that would make Russia’s army the second largest in the world after China.

The decree, published on the official government website, will take effect on December 1. It says the overall size of the armed forces is to be increased to 2.38 million people.

According to data from the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a leading military think tank, such an increase would leave Russia with more active combat soldiers than the United States and India and make its army second only to China in size. Beijing has just more than 2 million active duty service personnel, according to IISS.

The decree marks the third time Putin has expanded the army’s ranks since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and comes as Russian forces inch forward in eastern Ukraine and try to push Ukrainian forces out of Russia’s Kursk region.

In June, Putin put the number of troops involved in the fighting in Ukraine at nearly 700,000.

After calling up 300,000 reservists in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the latter part of 2022, Russia has relied on recruiting volunteer soldiers, lured by relatively high wages.

Dara Massicot, an expert in the Russian military at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, questioned whether Moscow was ready to foot the bill for the increase in active servicemen.

“There are ways to staff a standing 1.5 million force but the Kremlin will not like them if they are truly grappling with what that requires,” Massicot wrote on social media platform X.

“Are they really able to boost the defense budget to sustain procurement AND this requirement?”

Massicot, who has released a report on Russia’s drive to regenerate its army, said Moscow could take the unpopular and difficult decision of expanding the draft size or change the law to allow more women to work in the military to reach such a goal.

“Look for signs that this is a real initiative to recruit and expand, and not a kind of show to intimidate others. The current volunteer method is working but has strains. This [expansion] means more expense/strain,” she said.

Many commentators have noted that the Kremlin has been reluctant to call up more reservists, fearing a repeat of 2022 when hundreds of thousands of people fled the country to avoid being sent to combat.

Although Russia’s population is more than three times the size of Ukraine’s, it has – like Kyiv’s forces – been sustaining heavy battlefield losses.

The exact scale is a state secret.