Putin orders to recruit 137,000 more staffs in Russian armed forces

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday signed a decree to recruit 137,000 more staffs into the country’s armed forces for a total of nearly 2.04 million amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.

As part of the changes, the total number of military and civilian staff in the Russian Armed Forces will increase from 1.9 million to nearly 2.04 million.

The presidential order is set to go into effect of Jan. 1, 2023.

To this end, Russian authorities have been instructed to allocate additional federal budget funds to the Defense Ministry.

Putin had last fixed the size of the Russian Armed Forces in November 2017 to 1.9 million staff, including 1.01 million combat personnel.