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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Friday, December 13, 2013

Putin to Hire 500,000 Professional Soldiers



Russian Military to Recruit 500,000
Professional Soldiers by 2022


Russia’s military will have 500,000 soldiers serving on professional contracts within a decade, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Tuesday.

Half of the armed forces will be made up of professional service personnel by 2022 under plans to shift away from conscripts and more than double the number of contract soldiers from the present 220,000.

But Shoigu also acknowledged at an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board that Russia’s armed forces are currently short of nearly one in five troops reports RIA Novosti.


“At present, the Russian military has 82 percent of the required manpower,” Shoigu said.

“We have prioritized full manning of airborne, special forces, naval infantry and peacekeeping units, including those involved in ensuring security during the Winter Olympics in Sochi.”

Russia is undertaking major reform of the military that includes plans to spend $650 billion by 2020 on new equipment and a transition from a conscript army to a largely professional force.

But it has struggled with a shortage of recruits as a result of draft dodging and a shrinking pool of eligible conscripts. Draft evasion and demographic decline have forced the Defense Ministry to halve the number of conscripts in five consecutive recruitment periods since autumn 2011.

The military needs to enrol about 300,000 men during each draft to keep the number of personnel at the required level of 1 million. All Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 are obliged by law to perform one year of military service.

Shoigu said the Defense Ministry would continue the practice of large-scale snap-alert drills in 2014 to check the combat readiness of the armed forces.

The Russian military has held six surprise inspections of combat readiness and most of the 750 planned army-level exercises since the beginning of this year.

Shoigu said the exercises helped create a realistic picture of the current state of the Russian armed forces and adjust arms procurement plans for various branches of the military.

Putin Outlines 2014 Arms Procurement Plan

MOSCOW,  (RIA Novosti)  –  President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu laid out Russia’s arms procurement roadmap for 2014 on Tuesday including new strategic missiles, tanks and aircraft.

 “In 2014 more than 40 of the newest intercontinental ballistic missiles, 210 aircraft, and more than 250 armored vehicles will enter into the armed forces,” President Putin said at a meeting of the country’s top military leadership.

Russia will see the continued deployment of the Yars ICBM to the Strategic Missile Forces and the Iskander tactical ballistic missile to the ground forces next year, Shoigu said. Two new ballistic missile submarines will also become fully operational next year, he added.

President Putin outlined a roadmap last year to increase defense spending by nearly two-thirds to $97 billion by 2016. Putin said the funding was vital to modernize the military’s hardware, while calling for the armed forces’ operating costs to be kept to less than 30 percent of the defense budget.

A total of $650 billion is to be spent on military hardware in the period to 2020.


HD - Russian Army Parade Victory Day, 2013











April, 1944
The total collapse of Nazi Germany.
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Before a single Allied soldier set foot in Normandy, World War II was effectively over.
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The Soviet Union had won the war at the Battles of Stalingrad (1942), Kursk and Smolensk (both 1943).  From October,1943 on it was simply a foot race to see how fast the Germans could run away from the Russians.  The only real challenge for the Russians was being able to move troops West as fast as the Germans could retreat.
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Before Normandy the Russians were already pushing into Romania and Poland.  The march to Berlin was well under way and from a military point of view the invasion of Normandy was not needed.

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See our article D-Day - The unnecessary battle

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