Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to increase the number of soldiers in his armed forces by 137,000.

Officially, it is currently exactly 1,013,628.

But even before the Russian attack on Ukraine at the end of February, there were said to be not that many, but only around 900,000.

Frederick Smith

Political correspondent for Russia and the CIS in Moscow.

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Putin's decree will come into force at the beginning of next year, and his government has to provide budget funds to achieve the new target strength.

Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu has just assured that he can "completely fill" the army with the existing preparation system.

The only thing that is clear, however, is that Putin constantly needs supplies in the protracted Ukraine war.

On the one hand, the Russian Ministry of Defense is directly recruiting new contract soldiers.

On the other hand, many regions set up “volunteer battalions”.

The term, which ties in with the mass mobilization against the German attackers in the "Great Patriotic War", also means enlisting as a soldier for six months or a year.

The logic behind this is explained, for example, by notes hanging in Moscow's hallways: Military replacement offices "invite citizens aged 18 to 59" to commit themselves for a limited period of time.

This is "not easy work", but makes it possible to "consciously and professionally fulfill one's constitutional task and duty to protect the fatherland".

The war in the capital seems far away

Unlike a conscript, the contract soldier is “a voluntary protector of the homeland”.

Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 are required to do one year of military service, but traditionally many avoid this with medical certificates or university enrollments.

On a weekday trip to the responsible military replacements office in the western Moscow district of Kunzewo, there are no queues of recruits, not even individual prospective recruits;

after all, a sign on the building on Partisanenstrasse commemorates the heroes of World War II who worked there.

Now in Moscow, billboards on the streets celebrate "heroes" with the faces of young soldiers;

where and how they are said to have acquired their “fame” is not included.

Otherwise, the war in the capital seems far away.

Journalists from the news portal "Mediasona" and the Russian service of the BBC have so far counted 6,024 Russian soldiers killed in Ukraine on the basis of official reports, media reports and posts on social media.

The actual number of casualties is assumed to be much higher; the Russian Ministry of Defense has only officially presented its own casualty figures twice, most recently on March 25.

In the openly accessible sources – the number of which is steadily decreasing as the war drags on, presumably because the pressure to cover up is increasing – the journalists came up with 15 dead from Moscow and 46 from the second largest city, St. Petersburg.

A pattern emerges: the richer the region, the fewer soldiers it provides.