The Kremlin is still considering the possibility of a new wave of mobilization, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources among US officials. According to them, such a step would most likely be taken after the State Duma elections, scheduled for September 20.
The new mobilization wave, as WSJ notes, would allow sending several thousand more recruits to the front. Unlike in the fall of 2022, when reservists and people with military experience were mostly called up, now Russians without training and without the desire to fight could be subject to mobilization, the newspaper reports.
Russian authorities are currently trying to replenish the army through other means, including coercion to sign contracts. Recently, roundups of men of military age have become more frequent in the Penza, Ulyanovsk, Rostov, Amur and Yaroslavl regions, as well as in Udmurtia, Tatarstan, Kaluga, Voronezh and Arkhangelsk. Penza police said the roundups are "of a planned nature and are periodically conducted in the region."
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, told WSJ that if Vladimir Putin continues to seek control over the entire territory of Donbas, "he may have no choice but to announce mobilization."
At the same time, the political risks of such a decision may outweigh the potential military benefits at the front, the publication says. Some Russians have already declared their readiness to resist: 53-year-old reserve officer Dmitry Rogin told the newspaper that "as soon as they give him a weapon," he will shoot those who mobilized him.
In March, Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov denied rumors of possible mobilization. Last week, Dmitry Medvedev called such statements an attempt to destabilize the situation before the elections and said that "there is no need for it," although the figures he published show that the recruitment of contract soldiers is declining.
Russians have become more likely to seek advice on how to avoid possible mobilization. The project "Idite lesom" reported receiving 150–200 such messages daily. Search queries about mobilization and deferment from it reached their highest levels since 2022, Verstka writes. The number of vacancies for military registration specialists published by government agencies and companies exceeded two thousand, according to an analysis by Agentstvo.