The Russians Spent Months Forming A New Army Corps. It Lasted Days in Ukraine.

The Kremlin this summer scrambled to form a new army corps, seeking replacements for 80,000 troops injured or killed in Ukraine and 5,000 wrecked or captured vehicles.

The 3rd Army Corps on paper is a powerful force, with several brigades encompassing 10,000 troops in a dozen or more battalions equipped with hundreds of T-80 and T-90 tanks and other vehicles.

But it’s a hollow formation, staffed by old, unfit volunteers including drug and alcohol addicts. And when the 3rd AC’s vanguard rushed to northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv Oblast last week in a desperate bid to block a Ukrainian counteroffensive, the corps just … melted away.

The 3rd AC, based in Mulino, 200 miles east of Moscow, represents the Kremlin’s best effort to make good its deepening losses after 200 days of fighting in Ukraine. That the 3rd AC failed to make any difference in Ukraine is very bad news for the Russian war effort. It’s not going to get easier for the Russian army to stand up additional formations.

As Russian casualties exceeded 50,000 this spring, the Kremlin began scraping together fresh battalions by raiding the training and garrison establishment of existing brigades. At the same time, the army announced an initiative to form scores of new regional volunteer battalions—and even offered elevated salaries of up to $5,000 a month.

It’s these new volunteer battalions that comprise the brigades, including the 72nd Separate Motor Rifle Brigade, that serve under the 3rd AC banner. The corps reportedly was supposed to have as many as 20,000 troops, but recruitment seems to have stalled at around 10,000.

This should come as no surprise. The recruitment drive behind the 3rd AC collided with Russia’s unhappy demographics and conscription practices. Roughly half of the 900,000 people in the Russian army forces are professionals on long-term contracts. The other half is conscripts between the ages of 18 and 27.

The conscripts serve just one year and, by law, aren’t supposed to see combat. Of the million or so young men who are in the age range for conscription, around a third are exempt for medical or educational reasons. Twice a year, the Kremlin taps roughly 200,000 of the 700,000 who are eligible for the yearlong military service.

There’s not a lot of excess manpower in the conscription pool. For the most part, these are not the men who are filling out the volunteer battalions. Instead, the Kremlin has been targeting older men, 2 million of whom have previous military experience and technically belong to the military’s reserve. The army also has been soliciting volunteers from Russia’s prisons.

The upshot is that the 3rd AC’s soldiers in general are less fit than are the younger troopers in other units. “Recruitment of so-called ‘reservists’ to the 3rd Army Corps is … ongoing,” the Ukrainian general staff stated. “Among the already recruited personnel, there is a large number of people with drug and alcohol addiction.”

Fit or not, elements of the 3rd AC in late August deployed to Kharkiv Oblast where, a week later, a dozen Ukrainian brigades launched a powerful counteroffensive that, in a heavy five days, rolled Russian forces out of the oblast and back across the Russian border.

Video of a 3rd AC artillery battery, rolling along a Kharkiv highway, circulated on social media.

The 3rd AC was supposed to bolster Russian defenses around Kharkiv. It instead lost a few vehicles to Ukrainian attacks then joined the Russian retreat from the oblast, leaving behind tanks and BMP-2 and BTR-80 fighting vehicles. These vehicles were identifiable by their distinctive circle-inside-a-triangle insignia.

It’s unclear what’s next for the 3rd AC. It still could form and deploy units. But the performance of the corps’ vanguard outside Kharkiv shouldn’t inspire confidence.

Worse, the manpower hole the 3rd AC was supposed to fill now is much deeper. The Kharkiv counteroffensive cost the Russian army hundreds of vehicles and potentially thousands of soldiers. Among the losses was a significant portion of the elite 1st Guards Tank Army.

Whatever the 3rd AC’s prospects for future mobilization, it certainly cannot replace the gap in the Russian order of battle resulting from the partial destruction of the 1st GTA.