MOSCOW, Sept 17, (AP): Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the country’s military to increase its number of troops by 180,000 to a total of 1.5 million, as Moscow’s military action in Ukraine drags on for more than 2 ½ years. Putin’s decree, published on the official government website, will take effect Dec 1.

It sets the overall number of Russian military personnel at nearly 2.4 million, including 1.5 million troops, and orders the government to provide the necessary funding. The previous increase in Russian troop numbers came last December, when a decree by Putin set the total number of Russian military personnel at about 2.2 million, including 1.32 million troops.

The most capable Russian troops have been pressing an offensive in eastern Ukraine, where they have made incremental but steady gains in the past few months. In June, Putin put the number of troops involved in what the Kremlin calls the "special military operation” in Ukraine at nearly 700,000. After calling up 300,000 reservists in the face of Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the fall of 2022, Russian authorities have switched to filling the ranks of troops fighting in Ukraine with volunteer soldiers, who have been attracted by relatively high wages.

Many commentators have noted that the Kremlin has been reluctant to call more reservists, fearing domestic destabilization like what happened in 2022 when hundreds of thousands fled Russia to avoid being sent to combat. The shortage of military personnel has been widely cited as a key reason behind the success of Ukraine's incursion into Russia's Kursk region launched Aug 6. The Kremlin has sought to avoid the redeployment of troops from eastern Ukraine and relied on reinforcements from other areas to stem the Ukrainian incursion. The Russian Defense Ministry on Monday reported reclaiming control of two more villages in the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces.