There has been a systematic decline in the signing of new military personnel, and a shortfall in recruitment quotas for 2025 and 2026, according to administrative sources and expert assessments.
With at least 1.4 million casualties from the 52-month-long war of aggression, including 450,000 dead, the problem is only getting worse. Some assessments suggest Ukraine now inflicts more casualties monthly than the Kremlin can recruit.
What will Putin do? President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave his thoughts in August, saying: “We are already observing a lot of relevant steps,” and the Kremlin’s media mouthpieces have also highlighted the subject. Some have argued that this second wave of mobilization – following the first in 2022 – will come after the Duma elections on 18–19 September.
Officials, with an eye on those elections, have repeatedly denied such plans. Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s Representative to the United Nations, said his country does not need mass mobilization. Speaking in Bishkek at the conclusion of the SCO summit on September 1, Putin rejected claims of a forthcoming mobilization, describing them as baseless and as part of an information operation targeting Russia.
Yet a series of administrative, legal, and military developments suggest people are already facing rising pressure to go to the frontline. And just as in 2022, many young Russians have already left or are exploring their options.
Russia cannot hide that the current system is under serious strain and that new approaches are being introduced. In July, for example, the Duma passed legislation allowing people with outstanding criminal convictions to sign military contracts during periods of mobilization. Deputy Defense Minister Viktor Goremykin said the law was simply to expand the pool of candidates.
Lawmakers also introduced a bill to fine companies as much as 1 million rubles ($11,666), or suspend their operations for 90 days, if they fail to support mobilization and the broader needs of the war effort.
In a parallel development, Rosgvardia, Russia’s federal national guard, drafted amendments to the regulations governing civil defense in the service and its subordinate organizations. The proposed changes would require preparations to protect its facilities, personnel, staff, and their families against risks associated with mobilization, martial law, and wartime conditions.
Russia conducted military exercises in Kaliningrad Oblast in July to specifically rehearse mobilization procedures, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing Western intelligence officials.
The Crimean Tatar guerrilla movement ATESH also said special commissions had arrived at the Kadamovsky and Alabino training grounds in Rostov and Moscow oblasts to evaluate the sites’ capacity to accommodate large numbers of personnel.
The expansion of military training centers at Russian universities, which provide male students with basic military training, offers a further indication of what’s to come. There are now 150 of the centers, compared to 114 in 2022.
And there is mounting pressure on students to sign up. Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov said universities will have to ensure at least 2% of students sign contracts with the Ministry of Defense.
Internal Ministry of Defense documents, inadvertently published on several college websites, suggest the Kremlin intends to recruit 78,800 personnel into the military’s Unmanned Systems Forces this year, partly by enlisting students.
Universities across the country, including some of the largest institutions in Moscow and St. Petersburg, have been actively pressuring students to sign military contracts. Those facing expulsion over unresolved academic debts have been threatened with dismissal unless they join up.
They are lured with promises of short-term, well-paid postings in supposedly “safe” drone units, but such postings are not guaranteed and may extend for the full duration of the war.
Similar patterns have emerged in Russian secondary schools, where large numbers of students, including those with strong academic records, have been denied admission to the 10th grade. This has forced them into vocational colleges to pursue trade qualifications, a track that leaves them more vulnerable to conscription and deployment to the front.
Senior regional officials cited by the independent Russian outlet Meduza have also described a directive from the federal government instructing regional and local administrations to reduce their male staff by 10%-15% by October, making them available for mobilization.
Human rights organizations that assist mobilized servicemen, including the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (DSO), the Conscript’s School, and Go by the Forest, have recorded a marked increase in inquiries from Russians about mobilization and ways to avoid it.
Data from Russian search engine Yandex Wordstat show the phrase “exemption from mobilization” was used 97,380 times in July, the second-highest volume for that search since September 2022.
A comparable pattern appears in search data for “rent Armenia,” and real estate agents in Yerevan say they saw a sharp rise in rental inquiries from Russian citizens in July.
Ivan Chuvilyaev, a spokesman for Go by the Forest, said “creeping mobilization” has been underway in Russia for three years, and has shifted from one segment of the population to another as it pressures individuals into military contracts.
At various points, the bureaucracy has targeted people with outstanding debts, alcoholics, students, conscripts completing mandatory service, and those under arrest or in jail, Chuvilyaev said on the Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit (We Can Explain).
The government has relied on a combination of financial incentives, deception, and coercion to generate the manpower to sustain offensive operations in Ukraine and build an active strategic reserve.
Evidence from 2025 and 2026 shows regional governments introducing an expanding array of financial incentives to attract contract personnel, including debt relief, multi-million-ruble enlistment bonuses, monthly salary guarantees, and municipal compensation.
Data compiled by Janis Kluge at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs showed the average sign-on bonus paid by Russian regions rose by roughly 30% year-on-year, climbing to between 1.8 and 1.9 million rubles ($21,000-$22,000) in 2026 from 1.4 million rubles in mid-2025.
The geographic distribution of confirmed fatalities shows casualty rates are disproportionately concentrated in the poorest regions, suggesting economic incentives, rather than patriotic mobilization, have remained the principal drivers of recruitment.
But such incentives may no longer be enough.
According to Kluge’s analysis of regional recruitment spending, Russia was still signing approximately 1,000 contract soldiers per day as of August, a figure slightly below last year’s level but broadly consistent with a longer-term downward trend that has persisted since late 2024.
Kluge suggests that this data may indicate the pressure for a new mobilization round is somewhat less acute than it appeared earlier in the year, though he maintains that such a scenario remains plausible.
His cautious assessment, however, remains a minority view in the West. Russia continues to exhibit indications of an impending mobilization and of the Kremlin’s readiness to further escalate the military conflict — not only with Ukraine, but with Europe and NATO more broadly.
Dr. Alexandra Yatsyk is a CEPA Russia Future Fellow, a researcher at the University of Lille, and an Adjunct Professor at Sciences Po, France. Her expertise covers identity-making in Eastern Europe and Russia, biopolitics, illiberalism, and memory. She co-authored and co-edited a number of books, including Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: From Population to Nation (Lexington, 2019), Lotman’s Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), Boris Nemtsov and Russian Politics: Power and Resistance (Ibidem Verlag & Columbia University, 2018), and others.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
