The head of the General Staff, Russian General Valery Gerasimov, responsible for operations in Ukraine, said that the military reforms being considered by the Russian Federation would be a response to the possible expansion of NATO and the “collective West”, which he accused of waging a hybrid war. against Moscow, reports Al Jazeera.

In his first public statements, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, Valery Gerasimov, acknowledged the problems with the mobilization of soldiers and the challenges of the war that began 11 months ago.

“The system of mobilization training in our country is not fully adapted to the new modern economic relations,” Gerasimov told the “Arguments and Facts” website.

“So we had to fix everything on the fly.”

Military reforms take NATO expansion into account

Russia, the world’s second largest army, announced in mid-January that it would make “major changes” to its armed forces from 2023 to 2026, vowing to reorganize its military structure after months of setbacks on the battlefield in Ukraine, Reuters reported. The message appeared on the day when Serhiy Shoigu announced that he had visited the military participating in the war in Ukraine, without specifying the exact location.

Gerasimov warned that military reforms could be adjusted in response to security threats.

“Today, such security threats include the North Atlantic Alliance’s desire to expand to Finland and Sweden, as well as the use of Ukraine as a tool for waging a hybrid war against our country,” said the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army. .

Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO last year in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The plans also call for the creation of two additional military districts in Moscow and Leningrad and three motorized rifle divisions as part of joint military formations in Kherson and Zaporizhia, two of the four regions that Russia claims to have annexed in September “permanently” after referendums denounced on the international stage as illegitimate .

Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the situation in the Ukrainian regions illegally annexed by Moscow is “complicated in some places.”

Russia has never seen such “intensity of military operations”.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has come under a lot of criticism for losses on the battlefield and for Moscow’s failure to capture Kyiv in three days, as it had originally planned.

The thorn in the Kremlin’s agenda could be Denys Kireev, a former banker who provided vital intelligence to Kyiv the day before the invasion, and who, according to the head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kyryll Budanov, was an employee of the GUR, but was executed in March in a SBU car and thrown away on one of the streets of the capital of Ukraine, a suspect in connections with the Russian special services.

Gerasimov said that modern Russia has never seen such “intensity of military operations” that forces it to conduct offensive operations to stabilize the situation.

“Our country and its armed forces are acting today against the entire collective West,” said the commander of the troops involved in the “special military operation,” as Putin calls it.

Russia’s goals have changed

But at the beginning of the 12th month of the war, the goals of the Russian “special forces operation” changed.

What began as a campaign to “denazify” and “demilitarize” Ukraine is now presented as a defense against the hostility of the West and a unipolar world.

“The main goal of this activity is to ensure the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country,” Gerasimov said.

Who is Valery Gerasimov?

67-year-old Valery Gerasimov took a direct part in planning the invasion of Ukraine.

He started his military career in 1977 and was the commander of the Second Chechen War. He has been the head of the General Staff since 2012.

In 2014, he was sanctioned by the European Union for undermining the independence of Ukraine.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu appointed him commander-in-chief of Russian forces deployed in Ukraine in January, just three months after General Surovikin took command, in an attempt by Moscow to take the lead on the battlefield.

General Gerasimov, the target of the Ukrainians at the beginning of the invasion

At the end of April, the United States tried to prevent the liquidation by Ukrainian forces of the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Army, General Valery Gerasimov, reports The New York Times.

American special services, which at the end of April became aware of the general’s intention to go to the front, did not report this information to Kyiv, fearing his murder. But his move to Ukraine was eventually discovered by the Ukrainian special services, who were indeed planning a coup, but cautiously warned Washington about it.

Fearing the escalation of the conflict in the event of the elimination of the number one in the Russian army, the Americans wanted to prevent the Ukrainians from taking aim at the general. “I told them not to do it,” a US official told The New York Times.

But the operation was already done. Several Russian officers were killed in the attack, but the chief of staff escaped with his life. Since then, the visits of Russian military leaders to occupied Ukraine have significantly decreased.

Read here the most important information from 336th day of the war in Ukraine