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Russia

There is no consensus over how many Russian troops were present in the Far East around the time of the commencement of the war. One estimate states that the Russian army possessed 60,000 infantry 3,000 cavalry and 164 guns mostly at Vladivostok and Port Arthur with a portion at Harbin. This was reinforced by the middle of February to 95,000 with 45,000 at Vladivostok, 8,000 at Harbin, 9,000 at Haicheng, 11,000 on the Yalu River and 22,000 at Port Arthur.

Olender gives the figure at 100,000 men including 8 infantry divisions, fortress troops and support troops. The entire Russian army in 1904 amounted to 1,200,000 men in 29 Corps. The Russian plan was immensely flawed as the Russians possessed only 24,000 potential reinforcements east of Lake Baikal when the war commenced. They would be reinforced by 35,000 men after 4 months and a further 60,000 men 10 months after the commencement of the war at which point they would take the offensive. This plan was based on the erroneous belief that the Japanese army could only mobilise 400,000 with them being unable to field more than 250,000 in an operational sense and 80,000–100,000 of their operational strength being necessary to secure supply lines and therefore only 150,000–170,000 Japanese soldiers would be available for field action. The possibility of Port Arthur being taken was dismissed entirely.

An alternative figure for forces in the Far East is given at over 150,000 men and 266 guns, with Vladivostok and Port Arthur containing a combined force of 45,000 men and with an additional 55,000 engaged in guarding lines of communication, leaving only 50,000 troops to take the field.

Unlike the Japanese, the Russians did utilise the Corps system and in fact maintained two distinct styles of Corps: the European and the Siberian. The two corps both possessed two divisions and their corresponding troop numbers, but a Siberian Division was much smaller, containing only 3,400 men and 20 guns, with a corps containing around 12,000 men and lacking both artillery and divisional guns. Russia only possessed two Siberian Corps, both unprepared for war. After war was declared, this number was raised to seven as the conflict progressed. The European Corps in comparison contained 28,000 soldiers and 112 guns with 6 such corps sent to the Far East during the war – a further three being dispatched that did not arrive before the war ended.

Russian Logistics were hampered by the fact that the only connection to European Russia was the Trans-Siberian Railway, which remained incomplete as at Lake Baikal the railway was not connected. A single train would take between 15 and 40 days to traverse the railway, with 40 days being the more common figure. A single battalion would take a month to transport from Moscow to Shenyang. After the line's eventual completion, 20 trains ran daily and by the conclusion of the war some 410,000 soldiers, 93,000 horses and 1,000 guns had been carried down it.

The tactics utilised by the Russians were as outdated as their doctrine. The Russian infantry were holding to the maxim of Suvorov over a century after his death. The Russian command still used strategies from the Crimean war, attacking en echelon across a wide front in closed formations; it was not uncommon for Russian higher command to bypass their intermediate commanders and issue orders directly to battalions, thus creating confusion during combat.