Vladimir Putin ordered the Russia military personnel expansion Putin on Monday, setting the Russian army’s active-duty strength at 1.55 million servicemen. The decree also lifts Russia’s armed forces to 2,441,630, a fresh increase in the middle of the Ukraine war.
The order adds 15,500 active servicemen and follows a similar increase Putin ordered in August. For Russian commanders, the change points to another attempt to widen the force while the war keeps draining manpower on both sides.
Putin’s new force target
The decree gives Russia a larger paper force, but it does not spell out how the extra personnel will be found or absorbed. That leaves the practical work to recruitment, retention, or other internal adjustments inside the military structure.
The size of the increase is modest compared with the headline figure, yet it is still a formal step upward at a time when Russia has already expanded once this year. The repetition matters because it shows the Kremlin is not treating the earlier order as a one-off adjustment.
Zelenskyy’s North Korean warning
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X on Monday that more than 8,000 North Korean troops were already on Russian territory and that another 10,000 were being prepared for deployment. Zelenskyy said the North Korean troops were being selected for training and subsequent deployment to Russia.
That claim adds another layer to the force picture. Ukraine is facing not only Russian manpower decisions, but also the prospect of additional North Korean personnel being readied for Russia after North Korea already sent an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2024.
Russia, Ukraine, and the next strain
Zelenskyy also said on Monday that nine people had been killed and more than 80 injured in Russian drone strikes throughout Ukraine. Most of the North Korean troops have been deployed in the Kursk region to help repel a Ukrainian incursion, tying the foreign deployments directly to the fighting.
Alexus Grynkewich told a committee of EU lawmakers that Russia’s sabotage campaign in Europe was failing to put countries off supporting Ukraine. He said, “State-directed sabotage is growing increasingly brazen” and “These are clear examples of attempts to instil fear and fracture our unified support to Ukraine. It isn’t working.”
The next pressure point is not a public ceremony but a manpower test: how Russia fills and sustains the new 1.55 million active-servicemen target while the war continues to consume soldiers and while Zelenskyy says North Korean troops are being prepared for the same theater.
