More than six months after the start of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is having trouble recruiting, turning to volunteers it seeks even in prisons, and most of the recruits are “old and poorly trained,” a senior Pentagon official said Monday, AFP reported, citing news .ro.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a 10 percent increase in the size of the Russian military, or about 137,000 soldiers, by January 2023.

But “these efforts are unlikely to be successful,” the official told reporters on condition of anonymity, explaining that the Russian military is struggling to meet recruitment targets.

According to United States estimates, the size of the Russian army was 150,000 less than the declared goal of one million men in February 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine.

Since then, Russia has tried to send regular soldiers to the front rather than conscripts, but the conflict is expensive in terms of human and material resources.

Recruits will not strengthen the Russian army

“Russia has already started additional recruitment to form at least one battalion of volunteers per district and to form a third army corps,” the official said.

“They did this by removing the age limit for recruits and also bringing in prisoners.”

“It was observed that many of these recruits were old, in poor condition and poorly trained,” he concluded.

“All this suggests that the new recruits that Russia may attract by the end of the year will not strengthen the country’s military capabilities.”

Russians are afraid of general mobilization

Having failed to capture Kyiv at the beginning of the intervention, Russian forces are now concentrating their efforts in the east and south of Ukraine, where the fronts have made little progress in recent weeks.

The Kremlin has not yet embarked on a general mobilization, a move that many Russians fear.