Putin raises the Russian military to 2.44 million personnel — a new expansion of the armed forces

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the decree raising the total number of Russia’s armed forces to 2,441,630 personnel, of whom 1.5 million are military personnel, the Kyiv Post reports, citing the text of the decree published on Russia’s official portal of legal acts.

Compared with the previous quota of 2,389,130 set by the December 2024 decree, this is an increase of 52,500 personnel, the Kyiv Independent writes. It is the latest expansion of the Russian army since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, following similar decrees in August 2022, December 2023 and December 2024.

The move comes as Moscow tries to keep up the pace of the war without declaring a new general mobilization, relying on voluntary contract recruitment, the partial mobilization of September 2022 and, according to recent reports from Kyiv, thousands of troops from North Korea.