President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday increasing the number of soldiers in the Russian military by 180,000, bringing the total number of active servicemen to 1.5 million for this upcoming winter.The decree, which takes effect Dec.

1, sets the overall number of military personnel within Russia’s army at 2,389,139, including 1.5 million servicemen.It also marks the third expansion of the military since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Prior troop increases included 137,000 in August 2022 and another 170,000 last December.The latest expansion comes as Putin intensifies warnings that letting Ukraine use longer-range weapons to strike targets deep inside his country would put NATO “at war” with Russia.The Russian leader has repeatedly cautioned that Western military support for Ukraine could lead to a nuclear confrontation.Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged Western powers, particularly the U.K.

and U.S., to permit the use of British Storm Shadow missiles and U.S.-made ATACMS missiles to target inside Russian territory.