Tanks, drones, effective military and reserves: here are the numbers on the Russian threat provided by Crosetto

The threat posed by Russia is perceived with growing concern by NATO countries. This is the reflection from which Defence Minister Guido Crosetto started out in his speech on Thursday 3 July at a hearing before the joint Foreign and Defence Committees of the House and Senate on the outcome of the NATO summit in The Hague. And in support of this consideration, the leitmotif of the entire speech, the head of Defence of the Meloni executive brought some numbers that help to get an idea of the extent of the threat. 'I would not like to convey to you the threat from Russia only as a political consideration, but with some data, leaving you to interpret them,' Crosetto explained.

Here they are. By 2025 alone, Moscow will be able to produce over 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armoured vehicles, 400 Iskander missiles, thousands of missiles of various types, tens of thousands of aerial bombs, and over 1 million reconnaissance and attack drones. This brings Moscow's effective military to 1.6 million and the reserves to 5 million. On the 1,225th day of the war alone, 477 Hydrornis and 60 missiles were used to attack Ukraine. The minister then referred to the as yet unconfirmed report of 25-30,000 Koreans being sent to the Ukrainian front.

The Defence Minister emphasised that the Russian Federation is a war economy. An economy that currently absorbs 43% of Russian expenditure. A large part of these armaments is not sent immediately to the front, but is allocated to strategic reserves. There are currently no signs that the Russian military industry will be converted for civil purposes even in the event of a ceasefire. Armaments production has become a structural part of the national economy, an instrument of internal legitimisation of power, the defence chief added.

Despite the high number of human casualties, estimated at around 200,000 soldiers in the first half of 2025 alone and over 1 million in total since the beginning of the conflict, Russia has managed to mobilise another 300,000 in the last six months alone without any erosion of domestic consensus. 'And this figure,' said Crosetto, 'gives us back the size of the potential threat we face'.

"According to the estimates of our European allied nations," said Crosetto, "I'm talking about Germany, I'm talking about the Baltic countries, I'm talking about Poland, I'm talking about Sweden. within a maximum of five years, Russia could acquire the military capacity to directly threaten Alliance territory". "The NATO summit," the minister continued, "represented a crucial moment of collective reflection made necessary by the worsening global security scenario. Terrorism and Russia as the main threats to Atlantic security. This resulted in the definition of new, concrete and measurable capability goals to be concluded most of them by 2031, which are considered essential to ensure the credibility of the alliance'.