President Putin is once again increasing the size of Russia's army. According to a new decree, the Russian armed forces will grow to nearly 2.4 million people, of which 1.5 million will be regular military, reports BBC and other media from Moscow.
In total, it's about 180,000 new soldiers, according to Reuters.
How this will be done is not clear, but there have been rumors of an extended mobilization in Russia, which is expected to be very unpopular among the middle class.
This is the third time during the large-scale invasion of Ukraine that Putin has given the order to expand the army. Until the fall of 2022, a decree from 2017 still applied, which stated that the country should have "only" around one million soldiers, according to BBC.
The new decree will come into force on December 1.
