Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that he would partially mobilize the military to combat the country's manpower shortage. Experts say that Putin's late-in-the-game decision is unlikely to change the tide of war.
It took seven months and a series of Ukrainian victories for Putin to publicly escalate his country's war efforts.
Russia experts and foreign countries agree that Putin's Wednesday morning speech was a sign that the country's invasion is not going well.
According to experts, it can take months to mobilize 300,000 Russians to join the fight, despite the president's announcement. After the war began, Ukraine ordered a full military deployment and is now reaping the benefits.
Simon Miles is an assistant professor at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy and a historian of the Soviet Union and US-Soviet relations.
The country's lack of military infrastructure is one of the main obstacles to Russia's ability to mobilize.
To make them combat effective, you need to run them through a training process that takes several weeks at most. The Russians have been able tonibalize their ability to do that.
Early in the war, military divisions that lacked manpower turned to the country's training infrastructure. When officers were suddenly thrust back into combat roles, they had to take their training gear with them.
Russia will have to send people to the frontlines because all of the training resources are empty.
"We haven't seen a lot of evidence in the last six months that they're able to do that," Miles said.
Robert English is a professor at the University of Southern California who studies Russia and the Soviet Union.
A few hundred thousand troops can't solve it. English told Insider that a successful counteroffensive by the Ukrainians could collapse Russia's goals.
Russia needs more manpower and is at a technical military disadvantage. Russia is struggling to match the amount of military aid provided by the US and other western countries. Russian attacks are less reliable and scattered than Ukrainian ones.
It could take several weeks or months to prepare the reservists, and even then they are unlikely to be as effective as the Ukrainians.
The new soldiers will compound a military that reports have described as demoralized since the war began.
The Russian motivation is not as strong as it used to be. English said that a single Ukrainian soldier is worth as much as five Russians because of their high motivation.
It will take a lot more than a few hundred thousand soldiers for Russia to address the problem with Ukraine, he said.
Military experts are not the only ones who have doubts about Russia. The Russians are also becoming more cautious.
The realities of warfare in Ukraine are out of sight and out of mind for the Russian public. The announcement was a wake-up call during the war.
More than 500 people were arrested in various cities as of Wednesday evening, according to OVD-Info.
Several one-way plane tickets out of Russia sold out within an hour of Putin's speech.
It's clear that attitudes in Russia are changing.
Who doesn't want to spend winter in a trench? The man said, "Miles said." There was no one.
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