For President Vladimir Putin, the war in Ukraine has reached a difficult juncture. Russia continues to present itself as prepared to confront the West, while its military campaign faces a more immediate problem: sustaining the forces already committed to the war and generating enough manpower to expand them.
According to reporting by Die Zeit, western intelligence agencies have observed preparations by Russian authorities for a possible mobilisation. The procedures required for such an operation are reportedly already being practised. There is, however, no indication that Putin has made a final decision.
The possibility matters because Russia’s current recruitment system appears increasingly strained. The Ukrainian military intelligence service HUR has warned that a forced mobilisation could bring hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers into the Russian military. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently put the potential figure at about 300,000 men.
The timing could also become politically significant. Russians are due to elect a new parliament on 20 September. The election is not free or fair, but Putin has often postponed unpopular decisions until after such votes. Russian authorities officially deny that mobilisation plans exist.
The pressure on the Kremlin is nevertheless evident in the battlefield figures cited by Die Zeit. Russia’s minimal objective remains the conquest of the Ukrainian Donbas, which would require capturing the remaining approximately 5,000 square kilometres of the Donetsk region. Yet during the past six months, Russian forces have captured only several hundred square kilometres.
At the same time, Russian losses are estimated by western observers at between 10,000 and 15,000 men killed at the front each month. The result is a military that can continue replacing losses but appears to have less capacity to enlarge its force in Ukraine.
Russia has therefore relied heavily on financial incentives. Since the beginning of 2023, the military has sought recruits primarily through large payments, alongside promises to reduce prison sentences or erase debts. According to Janis Kluge, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, regional authorities receive quotas from Moscow specifying how many men they must recruit each month.
Regional governments have responded by offering substantial bonuses. The average payment is equivalent to about €20,000, while regional budget data allow researchers to estimate recruitment levels. Kluge’s analysis indicates that Russia is currently recruiting approximately 33,000 men each month.
That figure is enough, for now, to compensate for monthly losses. It is not enough to significantly enlarge the force fighting in Ukraine. According to Wadym Skibitskyj, deputy head of Ukraine’s HUR, approximately 735,000 Russian soldiers are currently stationed in Ukraine, roughly the same number as at the beginning of the year.
The increasingly elaborate recruitment system reveals another dimension of the manpower problem. Regional administrations are now paying professional recruiters and offering bonuses to people who persuade potential soldiers to sign military contracts.
Such incentives can extend beyond conventional recruitment. According to Kluge, they create opportunities for police officers and members of the military to pressure or threaten men into joining the armed forces.
Russian journalists had already exposed similar practices in 2024. The exiled Russian outlet Verstka analysed police databases and found that approximately 12 per cent of suspects in Russia were transferred directly from pre-trial detention into the military. In some parts of the country, police officers reportedly received the equivalent of about €1,500 for each recruit.
The system has since expanded. Reporting by The Moscow Times found that the number of Russian regions paying recruitment bonuses increased from 31 in October 2025 to 58, almost doubling in less than a year. Some regions have introduced additional payments for recruiting men from elsewhere.
In the Samara region, for example, a person who recruits a man from Samara can receive a reward of €1,200. Recruiting someone from a neighbouring region can bring a bonus equivalent to about €8,000.
These financial incentives have created a structure in which recruitment is not simply a matter of individuals volunteering for military service. They can also generate pressure from officials whose own financial rewards depend on finding new soldiers.
The exiled Russian NGO Idite Lesom, which supports deserters and people refusing military service, recorded 14 cases in the week ending 18 August in which men were allegedly mobilised through coercion or threats of violence. Many were described as being in precarious circumstances. In at least three cases, those affected were reportedly heavily intoxicated when detained.
In Novorossiysk, police allegedly found drugs on a man and then pressured him to sign a military contract by threatening him with a lengthy prison sentence. Idite Lesom says similar cases have increased, particularly in recent months.
The precise scale of coercive recruitment remains impossible to establish. Experts interviewed by Die Zeit regard the cases as sporadic, although increasingly frequent. The distinction between voluntary recruitment, pressure and outright coercion remains difficult to measure.
For the Kremlin, that ambiguity may be preferable to an openly declared mobilisation. A formal mobilisation would make the manpower demands of the war considerably more visible to the Russian population and could expose the government to political risks.
Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the American Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, currently considers the likelihood of forced mobilisation low, although he believes the possibility is increasing. Russia, he argues, does not yet face a catastrophic shortage of troops and can maintain the current situation.
The calculation changes if Putin wants more than maintaining the present position. If he intends to make substantial further advances and capture the territories that Russia has identified as its objectives, additional manpower would be required.
That is where the political risk becomes inseparable from the military calculation. A new mobilisation could provide the Kremlin with the soldiers needed to pursue its war aims, but it could also force Russian society to confront the scale of the conflict more directly.
“Decisive is whether Putin wants to admit how badly the war is going for Russia,” Kofman said. “So far, as an analyst, I see no signs of that.”
For now, therefore, the decision remains with Putin. Russia can continue relying on money, regional recruitment quotas and increasingly aggressive efforts to find volunteers. But if those mechanisms no longer provide enough troops to sustain the Kremlin’s ambitions, mobilisation would become the more consequential choice.
It could give Putin tens or hundreds of thousands of additional soldiers. It could also make the cost of the war harder to conceal.
