The European NATO countries experience problems in recruiting new troops and may face mobilization difficulties in the event of a conflict with Russia, the Financial Times (FT) reports.

According to the source, the European NATO countries have officially 1.9 million troops in total. In newspaper observer's estimates, this contingent should be enough to counter Russian armed forces. However, in reality, it will be difficult for Europeans to recruit more than 300,000 additional troops according to the new defense plans. Even if they are fully recruited, it will take months of training. The publication doesn't explain the need for exactly this number of people to be mobilized, but in July 2023 the NATO leaders approved a plan to deploy 300 thousand troops on the eastern flank of the alliance in case of a conflict.

Germany, Britain, France and Italy in particular are facing manpower shortages in their armed forces, the newspaper notes. Germany has approximately 180,000 soldiers but it is at least 20,000 below its NATO commitments. For the past decade, Britain has failed to meet its annual recruitment goals and last year, the country's ground forces decreased by 4,000. Since 2014, the number of French military personnel has decreased by more than 16,000. Italian army has decreased by over 39,000, the FT article runs. As to Camille Grand, a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), the current state of defense planning in Europe is insufficient and has led to recruitment gaps and annual reductions in military forces in most European countries.

In July 2023, at the summit in Vilnius, the NATO leaders identified Russia as the most significant security threat and approved the first defense plan against potential conflict with Russia since the end of the Cold War. On February 29th, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated that if Ukraine were to lose in the conflict with Russia, NATO countries would be obliged to take action against Russia. In late March, the Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed as nonsense the statements often voiced in the Western media about Moscow's alleged intentions to engage in a war with NATO.


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