The Kremlin and the Defense Ministry have instructed Russian regional authorities to secure the recruitment of 409,000 contract soldiers by the end of the year, the Financial Times reported, citing sources familiar with the matter. The newspaper said officials are under increased pressure to avoid announcing a new wave of mobilization.

According to the FT, the new contract soldiers are primarily used not to build trained reserves but to replace losses at the front. Western estimates put Moscow's losses at more than 30,000 people per month. Despite repeated attempts to boost troop numbers, the pace of the Russian offensive remains slow: according to the Institute for the Study of War, the army captured only 81 square kilometers in the first half of the year.

Grigory Sverdlin, founder of the project "Idite Lesom" (Go to the Forest), which helps Russians avoid military service, said the Russian army finds it harder "every year and every month" to find people willing to go to war. In his words, Putin is clearly postponing a new wave of mobilization, so the Defense Ministry is forced to put more pressure on a wide range of people to sign contracts.

To meet the plan, regions use various methods: detaining men on the streets, visits by officials, and recruiting debtors, those with suspended sentences, and recently demobilized conscripts. In Penza, police conducted raids on workplaces and took people from the streets to recruitment centers, where they were forced to sign contracts. Similar roundups occurred in other cities, including Ulyanovsk, where a man who lost an eye said he was forced to sign a contract, and in Rostov-on-Don, where police detained 35 workers from a local factory.

Janis Kluge, a researcher at the Berlin-based SWP institute, noted that local authorities are under enormous pressure to recruit the required number of soldiers each year. "They know who has debts, who is under investigation, and who recently lost their driver's license, and it is precisely these people they hunt for," the FT quoted him as saying.

Results do not always meet expectations: as the police of Khabarovsk Krai reported, last year they conducted 2,500 such "conversations," after which only 32 people signed up for the army, and almost all of them were suspected of criminal offenses.

According to the human rights organization Peace Plea, at least 28,000 Russian servicemen have been convicted for unauthorized abandonment of their units. The Ukrainian analytical group Frontelligence Insight reported that the real figure is likely at least twice as high.

Military expert Michael Kofman believes that without increased recruitment rates or a new mobilization, the Russian army will face a shortage of personnel. In his words, this will negatively affect offensive capabilities: units will not only get bogged down in the offensive but will eventually begin to lose significant territory.