1 Institute for the Study of War & AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 25
Karolina Hird, Layne Philipson, George Barros, and Frederick W. Kagan
August 25, 6:30 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s August 25 decree to increase the size of the Russian
military starting in January 2023 is unlikely to generate significant combat power in the
near future and indicates that Putin is unlikely to order a mass mobilization soon. The
decree increases the nominal end strength of the Russian Armed Forces by 137,000 military personnel,
from 1,013,628 to 1,150,628, starting on January 1, 2023.
The Russian military likely seeks to recover
losses from its invasion of Ukraine and generate forces to sustain its operation in Ukraine. The
announcement of a relatively modest (yet likely still unattainable) increased end strength target
strongly suggests that Putin remains determined to avoid full mobilization. The Kremlin is unlikely to
generate sufficient forces to reach an end strength of over 1,150,000 soldiers as the decree stipulates.
The Russian military has not historically met its end-strength targets. It had only about 850,000 active-
duty military personnel in 2022 before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, for example, well shy of
its nominal end strength target of over one million.
Russia would likely face serious obstacles to adding large numbers of new soldiers quickly. Apart from
the challenges Russian recruiters face, Russia’s net training capacity has likely decreased since February
24, since the Kremlin deployed training elements to participate in combat in Ukraine and these training
elements reportedly took causalities.
Russia may use the fall conscription cycle in October 2022, which
should bring in about 130,000 men, to replenish Russian losses, which reportedly number in the tens
of thousands killed and seriously wounded. The Kremlin may alternatively use the additional end
strength to formally subsume into the Russian military the forces of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s
Republics and/or the new Russian volunteer units that are not formally part of the Russian military.
The net addition to Russia’s combat power in any such case would be very small.
The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) disconnected from the power grid for the
first time in its operational history on August 25. Ukrainian nuclear operating enterprise
Energoatom reported that Russian shelling caused the disconnection by starting fires at ash pits near
the Zaporizhia Thermal Power Plant (ZTPP), approximately 5km from the ZNPP.
Energoatom stated
that the ZTPP is currently supplying the ZNPP with power and that work is ongoing to reconnect one
of the ZNPP power units back to the Ukrainian power grid.
Russian sources accused Ukrainian forces of firing at the ZNPP, but Russia has not provided clear
evidence of Ukrainian troops striking the plant.
As ISW has previously reported, Ukraine’s Main
Intelligence Directorate (GUR) stated that Russian troops deliberately conducted mortar strikes against
the ash pits at the ZTPP.
The GUR also has not provided clear evidence to support its claims. The
Russians’ failure to provide unequivocal evidence of the extensive shelling they accuse Ukraine of
conducting is more noteworthy, however, because Russia controls the ground and could provide more
conclusive evidence far more easily than Ukraine could. The GUR also reported on August 20 that
Russian officials had indefinitely extended the order for Ukrainian employees of the ZNPP to stay home,
and there have been no reports of any rescission of that order, which means that a portion of the ZNPP’s
workforce is apparently still absent on Russian orders despite the ongoing emergency.
Russian forces
have also heavily militarized the ZNPP since its capture, despite the fact that the facility is far from the
