Chapter 1
Russia has fought most of this war without a second call-up
Russia has fought most of this war without a second call-up. It ordered one “partial mobilisation”, in September 2022, and it set off protests and an exodus. Since then the army has been kept filled another way: contract soldiers drawn by large sign-up bonuses, recruited prisoners and, by Ukraine’s account, troops from North Korea. The question that runs underneath the war is whether that can keep pace with the losses, and the evidence comes in three kinds that rarely agree: the formal decisions Moscow publishes, the warnings Kyiv issues, and what ordinary Russians do.
Chapter 2
Nobody can measure the losses directly
Nobody can measure the losses directly. The firmest number is a floor. Mediazona and the BBC’s Russian service have confirmed 239,354 Russian military dead by name, to August 13, 2026, from obituaries, family posts and local reports. Volunteers who signed contracts after the invasion have been the largest group of the dead since September 2024; recruited prisoners and mobilised men follow. The count runs further behind every month. Of more than 77,000 deaths confirmed during 2026, no more than a tenth happened in 2026, because the drone-watched ground between the armies is now tens of kilometres deep and bodies cannot be recovered from it. The claimed figures are far higher and are not comparable: Ukraine’s General Staff counts every casualty, not only the dead, and has put Russian losses above 40,000 a month since July; Marco Rubio said in July he believed Russia was losing five to six thousand soldiers a week. Western officials estimated in August that Russia was losing about 6,000 more men a month than it recruits.
Chapter 3
Recruitment has held
Recruitment has held, at a rising price. Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, reading regional budget data, counts about 93,000 contracts in the second quarter of 2026, roughly a thousand a day, stabilising after a decline since late 2024, while the average regional cost of a recruit rose 30 per cent in a year. That is within about a tenth of Dmitry Medvedev’s own figure for the first half, and still short of the 409,000 Russia planned for the year. Analysts disagree on what it means: Kluge reads it as easing the pressure for a call-up, and others call that a minority view. ISW judges that recruitment has been falling since 2025 and no longer replaces the dead and wounded. Meanwhile the pool keeps widening — rules widened in July on which people with criminal convictions may sign contracts in wartime, and in September Putin backed letting men graded unfit for service join regional air-defence units. Ukraine’s intelligence says 8,500 North Koreans hold rear positions in Kursk, and claims Russia could ask Pyongyang for up to 50,000 more, a figure North Korea calls groundless.
Chapter 4
From July 2026 Kyiv warned
From July 2026 Kyiv warned, with rising numbers, that a new wave was coming once Russia’s September parliamentary election was over: “quite significant” for the autumn, then several hundred thousand, then about 300,000, then 600,000 across two years. Moscow denied each: Medvedev called it a “lying provocation”, Putin said in September there was “no scenario” requiring mobilisation and then that the talk was “utter nonsense”. Independent Russian media counted 17 official denials over the summer, and Meduza noted that almost identical denials preceded the 2022 call-up. What the state built in the meantime was machinery: fines for companies that defy mobilisation orders, reservists’ details gathered through their employers, and an electronic summons register that bans anyone served a notice from leaving the country. What it actually decided after the vote was smaller. A decree on September 28 raised the army’s authorised strength, the fourth such increase in 2026, and no call-up followed.
Chapter 5
Russians have not waited to find out
Russians have not waited to find out. In 2022 men left after the decree; in August 2026 they started leaving before one, with more than 19,000 people a day crossing into Georgia at one checkpoint on Russia’s own customs data. Requests for emigration help rose nearly eightfold, and searches for how to leave reached their highest since early 2023. What is unresolved is whether the machinery is ever switched on. Zelenskyy has argued that wider recruitment already amounts to mobilisation; Moscow says none is needed. His July forecast of a formal wave comes due at the end of November, and it is settled only by a published decree or equivalent instrument, not by either side’s words.
And now
There is still no new mobilisation order, and the contract system that replaced one is working harder for less. By Janis Kluge’s count from regional budget data, 263,000 men signed contracts from January to September, against 292,000 a year earlier — a pace that would miss the 2026 target of 409,000. The average regional sign-up bonus has risen 30% in a year, to 1.9m roubles. Relatives describe men pressed into contracts by recruiters working to quotas; Kluge calls it coercive mobilisation by delegation, while Carnegie’s Dara Massicot judges the supply still sufficient.
The autumn draft will take about 120,000 conscripts, down from 135,000 a year ago, and it is the routine one-year call, not a mobilisation. Bills to raise women’s service age and to call reservists into the fire service are in preparation, not law.
The losses being replaced keep rising. BBC Russian and Mediazona have now named 281,753 Russian dead, and the BBC estimates the real toll at 512,000 to 626,000. An unnamed NATO official put September’s Russian casualties above 50,000.
Where it stands today →