The Kremlin urgently needs supplies for the war against Ukraine. Because the number of volunteers is falling, observers expect a new mobilization in the fall. But that’s not all.
July 28, 2026, 05:09July 28, 2026, 05:09
Ivan Ruslyannikov / ch media
Military service in Ukraine continues to be aggressively promoted, as it is here in St. Petersburg.EPA
Concern is growing in Russia that Vladimir Putin could declare a new wave of mobilization as early as the fall due to the lack of soldiers on the front. The number of volunteers willing to sign a contract with the Defense Department—effectively signing their own death warrant—is shrinking. The Kremlin is therefore increasingly left with only coercive measures.
This summer there were incidents in several Russian regions that caused concern among the population: patrol officers stopped a car together with unknown men in balaclavas. The driver is first checked for violations of the road traffic regulations, then arrested and taken to a van. There he receives a summons to the military command and the message that he has to go to war against Ukraine.
Although such cases have not been reported on a large scale, they have been recorded both in central Russia and in the Far East. Many Russians attribute this to the fact that Putin is suffering from an acute shortage of soldiers and is preparing to declare a new wave of mobilization as early as the fall.
Men are taken away in front of their wives
Men are arrested in front of their wives and locked in vans. In the city of Penza, this led to women surrounding a minibus and clashing with military command staff. The incident was captured on video.
«Our men are simply being brazenly stolen. They aren’t even given five minutes to say goodbye,” said one Penza resident. Since then, many men in the city have tried to only leave the house for good reasons to avoid being kidnapped by military headquarters employees.
New Russian army recruits board a bus in Krasnodar.Image: AP
The representatives of the Ministry of Defense do not have harmless conversations with the detainees. Sometimes those affected are forced to sign a contract by force. Penza resident Arina, among others, reported this: “After the kidnapping, my husband was only able to contact me again when he was already at the border with Ukraine. He said they beat him. Very brutal. Right in the military headquarters. We don’t have money for a lawyer. And we also see that lawyers don’t help.”
According to his relatives, Yaroslav Kubov was also abducted by military personnel in Vladivostok. His relatives filed complaints with the military prosecutor’s office and demanded that criminal proceedings be initiated for deprivation of liberty against employees of the military command – so far without success.
More soldiers expected from North Korea
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested in an interview with Sky News that a new wave of mobilization would take place after the Russian parliament elections scheduled for September 21. The experts surveyed by CH Media also came to the same conclusion. According to Zelensky, Putin plans to recruit between 300,000 and 500,000 people as early as the beginning of October.
“He wants to increase mobilization. Not openly because he is afraid of his own society. But he will do so in early October if we do not manage to create problems for him in terms of logistics, weapons, gasoline and diesel and if our partners do not impose comprehensive sanctions because of his aggression,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky also said that Russia was preparing to receive another 30,000 soldiers from North Korea and then send them to the front. The expected military aid from North Korea would also include ballistic missile launchers.
How Putin could carry out a mobilization – two scenarios
The “partial mobilization” that Putin announced in September 2022 was a rather negative experience for the Kremlin that they hardly want to repeat, says Aleksei Tabalov, director of the human rights organization “Conscript School,” in an interview with CH Media. At that time it led to great social panic and mass emigration to Kazakhstan and Georgia.
“There is no question that Putin wants to recruit more soldiers. He wants to continue the war, hold the newly conquered territories and at the same time respond to the increasing Ukrainian drone attacks. The problem is that there are fewer and fewer people willing to sign a contract,” says Tabalov and continues: “In addition, the Kremlin is unlikely to want to shock its own population again. That’s why I see two ways Putin could mobilize this fall. The first variant – based on the Penza model – would be an approach based on prepared lists: employees of the military headquarters patrol the streets, visit companies and bring people from there to the front.
Tabalov also suspects that the Kremlin could suddenly announce that the so-called heroes of the war, wounded and exhausted, were returning home and needed a worthy volunteer replacement. In reality, however, these would not be volunteers, but rather people who were forcibly recruited.
Thanks to the digitalization of the military administration system, it should no longer be a problem for military commanders to locate such alleged volunteers. According to Tabalow, they are now the largest government collectors of personal data about men. Among other things, information about jobs, illnesses, criminal records and the addresses of relatives are stored. (schweiztoday.ch)