The Kabul Tribune (KT) — The European Union Mission in Afghanistan said Russia is facing growing manpower shortages as the war continues, arguing that demographic challenges and heavy battlefield losses have significantly reduced the country's working-age male population.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, the EU mission said
Russia's workforce has been weakened by low birth rates, high mortality, mass
emigration and what it described as more than 1.3 million battlefield
casualties since the start of the war.
According to the post, Russia has sought to address the
shortage by recruiting about 27,000 foreign nationals from 130 countries.
The EU mission claimed that many of the foreign recruits had
been coerced or deceived into joining the war, describing them as being used to
support what it called the Kremlin's "imperial ambitions."
The mission added that while foreign recruitment may
temporarily ease Russia's personnel shortages, it argued that the country is
increasingly running short of manpower for both the war effort and its domestic
economy.
Russia has consistently disputed Western estimates of its
military losses and has not confirmed the casualty figures cited by the
European Union.
