Marching Toward the Abyss II: Mobilization

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In last week’s BWR, I discussed the Kazakh–Russian relationship, recalibrating in real time as President Tokayev manages Russian President Putin and courts foreign devils for the benefit of Kazakhstan. Not all near abroad are equal.

In this week’s BWR, I discuss the possibility of an October mobilization. In June 2025, I discussed “Marching Toward the Abyss: Demobilization” and the associated social costs. Reports are circulating that the Kremlin has been quietly preparing a new mobilization after the managed Duma elections.

October Mobilization Call | Arithmetic of Volunteers | Say My Name: Mobilization | Three Mobilization Options | The Quiet Mobilization

Options – The Kremlin has embedded options in the system to avoid “saying my name”, but it is unclear if those options will be enough to achieve the Kremlin’s goals in Ukraine.

Cost – Citizen Ivan Petrovich is about to receive another invoice for a war of choice which he did not choose.

Joint iStories and Verstka reported that a new military mobilization could be announced as early as October, after the managed Duma elections, while stressing that no decision has been made. According to the piece, a person overseeing recruitment at a state corporation described months of preparation for “something that will never be called mobilization.” Another report, Meduza, added a milder option over mobilization being considered: rotating rear-area reservists. Then there are the turbo-partriots and Z-bloggers on Telegram channels advocating for a full-blown mobilization on the horizon.

The timing for this action is not subtle: an unpopular measure lands better after a managed election than before one.

Last June, in Marching Toward the Abyss: Demobilization, I argued that Russia had built a trap for itself. A quarter of a million dead and three-quarters of a million wounded, on the estimates then available, meant one in 145 Russians directly touched by the war.

I put one-time death and disability payments near $62 billion and lifetime veteran care near $209 billion, using a World Bank male life expectancy of 68 against an average soldier age of 36, leaving roughly 32 years of care each. Interfax reported that more than half of war participants recognized as disabled had undergone amputations, RAND described psychological rehabilitation capacity measured in dozens of beds, and Mark Galeotti, writing for the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, set out how demobilization would push violent crime back into Russian towns.

The conclusion then was that the Kremlin cannot comfortably demobilize – that train left the station in the third year of the second invasion of Ukraine. The conclusion now is the corollary to it. Another uncomfortable mobilization will deepen the war trap: growing problems with veterans’ assimilation, healthcare costs, and labor shortages already showing its ugly presence in Russia soicety.

Preparation is documented and extensive. Jamestown makes the essential legal point that the September 2022 decree was never terminated, so the first wave technically continues, and the Institute for the Study of War assesses that Putin already has every legal mechanism needed for an involuntary call-up at any scale. The summons registry is running, badly enough that Mediazona documented AI-generated summonses reaching women. Mobilization orders are being glued into military IDs in growing numbers, and more than 2,500 HeadHunter listings for military-registration specialists appeared by late July, per Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service, whose analysts nonetheless judge a full-scale wave unlikely before the vote. On 22 July the Duma widened the criminal-record categories eligible to sign contracts during mobilization and special periods. A statute drafted to operate during mobilization is itself a preparation artifact.

Discussion is well sourced. Verstka’s editor Olesya Gerasimenko said in a 30 June interview that the road map is very detailed, that training grounds can process several tens of thousands over two to three months, and that the missing ingredient is political will rather than capacity. Her belief that 70% of the 2022 cohort are dead comes with her own admission that no reliable statistics exist.