As far as the current situation between Russia and Ukraine is concerned, any action by all parties may affect the future direction of the situation, and recently, the news released by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has once again taken a key step in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Let's start with the data. According to Russia's official summary, the Russian military industry has delivered 1,530 tanks, more than 2,518 armored vehicles, 237 fixed-wing aircraft, 86 sets of air defense equipment, and 67 sets of radars this year. In the past 2 years of deep war, Russia has been able to deliver such large-scale equipment, which not only reflects the increase in Russia's military strength, but also shows the complete defeat of Ukraine.
It is worth noting that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced the statistics of Russia's ** data on the Ukrainian army, since the special military operation against Ukraine, the number of ** Ukrainian troops has exceeded 3830,000 and counting. The ** launched in June 2023 alone, the losses of the Ukrainian army are as high as 1590,000 people, and 766 tanks, including 37 Leopard tanks;2,348 armored vehicles, including 50 Bradley tanks supplied by the United States. The Kyiv regime has already paid a huge price for this ** operation.
In addition to these public war reports, Shoigu also bluntly stated that NATO has long been directly involved in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
In addition to using hundreds of satellites to provide Ukraine with a large amount of military intelligence, it has also directly sent NATO soldiers to Ukraine to teach the Ukrainian army to operate Western ** equipment such as Seahorse rocket artillery and "Patriot" missiles, and also provided support such as tactical ballistic missiles and multiple rocket launchers, Russia has a lot of evidence of direct Western support for Ukraine.
Shoigu also released a bombshell information that Russia directly annihilated more than 5,800 foreign mercenaries on the battlefield, including 466 American soldiers, 344 British soldiers, and 1,427 Polish soldiers. In other words, in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Russian army has long been confronted head-on by NATO.
Judging from Shoigu's announcement of the mass production of the Russian army** and his speech directed at NATO, this is more like an "ultimatum" or "war warning" to NATO. Combined with the signals released by the previous Russian ** Putin, the same attitude is maintained.
Today, at the annual meeting, Putin made it clear that Western countries will not give up their attempts to contain Russia, and facing a threat to sovereignty is one of the biggest challenges facing Russia at present, and only when Russia achieves its strategic goals will the relevant regions usher in real peace. And at the strategic level, the West's efforts to "defeat" Russia are completely bankrupt.
These words appear to be Putin's continued insistence on the special operation in Ukraine, but Putin then stressed the need for no second round of mobilization plans.
Putin said that there are currently 240,000 soldiers and 460,000 contract soldiers on the Russian-Ukrainian front, and the recruitment rate of 1,500 people per day in the Russian conscription office allows the Russian army not to worry about the problem of troop sources at all. And in early December, Putin also announced the expansion of the army by 170,000 regular troops, and Chairman Ai's military budget for 2024 to increase by 70%, all of which show the huge size of Russia's military power.
More than 700,000 troops are enough to complete the special military operation in Ukraine, but Russia's military readiness has not stopped, so the remaining target to deal with is NATO. Earlier, Russian Deputy Minister Ryabkov said in an interview with Izvestia that the possibility of a large-scale armed conflict between Russia and NATO cannot be ruled out. This series of actions is a very dangerous signal.
And compared with Putin's self-confidence, the situation on the Ukrainian side is very embarrassing.
Ukraine** Zelensky said at the annual press conference that the top level of the Ukrainian army proposed to "call up another 450,000 to 500,000 soldiers", which he called a "huge number" and a "highly sensitive issue", involving national defense, finance, etc.
Zelensky also admitted that Ukraine no longer has the ability to afford the logistics of 500,000 recruits, because it requires 500 billion hryvnia, or about 95 billion yuan. Without external assistance from the United States and the West, Ukraine will declare bankruptcy by March 2024. However, Zelensky did not explicitly veto, saying that he was discussing the matter.
This is the price of excessive dependence on the West. In the first year of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine received support from dozens of Western countries, asking for money for money, and for **giving**, and the amount of equipment aided by the West has exceeded the statistical capacity of the Ukrainian army, which can be imagined how huge the number is.
But in the second year, the Ukrainian army ** declared defeat, and the United States and the West also began to lose confidence in Ukraine, as the largest aid country, the US Congress successively vetoed the aid bills proposed by Biden**, and more than 60 billion aid funds to Ukraine could not be received;The EU's 50 billion euro aid bill to Ukraine was also rejected by Hungary and ultimately failed to pass.
Although the United States and Europe are still openly supporting Ukraine, they have secretly bypassed Ukraine and Russia to put forward conditions for peace talks. Against this background, what is the point of Ukraine continuing to mobilize 500,000 people?The Ukrainian military is not even able to provide sufficient ** equipment.
Before that, Ukraine has already carried out 10 rounds of mobilization, and the elderly over 60 years old and minors under the age of 18 have been sent to the battlefield, and if the 11th round of mobilization is carried out, the mobilization of 500,000 may make Ukraine no longer have men.