Bloomberg reports that earlier this year Putin ordered a 15% reduction in regional officials to ease the strain on the cash-strapped budget. According to documents obtained by the agency, some officials fear that the Kremlin may mobilize precisely those who have been freed up.
According to a Bloomberg source, an official from one of Europe’s security structures, Russia is preparing to send an additional 300,000 people to the war. He said that unlike in September 2022, there may be no official announcement of mobilization, although hundreds of thousands of Russians left the country then.
Agency sources said that Russia has reorganized the work of military enlistment offices so they can handle the influx of conscripts. Instead of paper summonses, they may send electronic ones while simultaneously banning departure from the country.
The Defense Ministry, according to Bloomberg, has gained access to a broad database of citizens. The unified military registration system is now linked to tax service data, Interior Ministry databases, medical history, property records, and border control databases.
A Bloomberg interlocutor in Moscow said that Vladimir Putin has still not made a final decision on mobilization, although the army needs new fighters, and the president still expects it to fully seize Donbas. According to him, Russia’s frontline losses now reach 1,000 killed per week, and the quality of those signing contracts with the Defense Ministry is currently extremely low.
To keep the size of the force on the Ukrainian front stable, which Putin estimated at 700,000 soldiers, Russia needs to recruit about 400,000 people a year. Janis Kluge, an expert at the German Institute for International Security Affairs, calculated that the average contract-signing bonus had reached 1.8 million rubles, and in the first half of the year 234,000 people were recruited into the army versus 260,000 a year earlier. Bloomberg analyst Alex Kokcharov estimated that the summer offensive brought only 155 sq. km under Russian control, whereas over the same period a year earlier it was 2,037 sq. km.
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