Caught between heavy battlefield losses and a desire to avoid alarming the Russian populace with a mass mobilization of reservists, the Kremlin has cobbled together a “covert” mobilization strategy. The eventual success of this multi-pronged effort propped up Russian troop numbers through 2023 and likely into 2024. But sustaining troop strength remains a formidable challenge for Russia, exemplified most recently by the decision to enlist North Korean troops to supplement Russian combat units in the Kursk region.
CNA’s recent report Russian Military Mobilization During the Ukraine War, commissioned by the Russia Strategic Initiative of US European Command, examines Russian mobilization activities in detail, while gauging their effectiveness in sustaining Russian combat power through the first two years of the war. Although Moscow struggled at first to mobilize sufficient combat troops to maintain an effective military balance on the ground, Russia’s partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists in September 2022 and its later successes in recruiting additional contract soldiers and irregular volunteers allowed its ground forces to stabilize the front and blunt Ukraine’s summer 2023 counteroffensive.
Russia’s mobilization problems early in its war against Ukraine had their genesis in the years leading up to the conflict, when poorly targeted reform efforts undermined Russia’s ability to mobilize additional combat troops. In the 2008 New Look reforms, Russia disbanded the Soviet-era mass mobilization army in favor of a smaller army of permanent ready combat brigades. This reform was adopted to make it easier for the Russian military to rapidly dispatch troops to trouble spots on Russia’s periphery—partly a reaction to initial troop shortages in two Chechen wars and the 2008 Georgia War. But the downsized permanent ready brigade structure was too small to meet the challenges of the war in Ukraine, which required a far larger initial combat force and steady inflows of fresh combat troops to achieve a favorable balance on the ground.
Russia did make some efforts to restore a mobilization capacity during the lead-up to the war. The reserves had become little more than a registry of every Russian who had completed their mandatory service—usually a 12-month conscription. The goal was to establish a more active core of reservists who participated in mobilization exercises. But such reforms were only partially completed at the time of the invasion. Moscow was thus forced to go to war with “the army it had,” which proved to be too small and dispersed to achieve a decisive breakthrough.
Further complicating matters, after the collapse of the initial invasion, Putin refused to order a partial mobilization of reservists—to avoid impacting the Russian populace. This was entirely consistent with Putin’s characterization of the war as a “special military operation,” a limited incursion that would lead to quick victory without requiring serious sacrifice on the part of the Russian people.
Round One of Russia’s Covert Mobilization
Without the option to mobilize reservists, military leadership pursued a “covert mobilization” campaign during the first year of the war to compensate for mounting losses. This mobilization campaign was “covert” in the sense that it was intended to avoid overtly disrupting the civilian populace. It targeted potential recruits who were most willing to fight or least able to resist. This included recruiting additional short-term contract soldiers for the regular military—but with limited success as potential recruits were deterred by high combat losses at the front. The Kremlin also coerced separatist leaders in the Donbas to provide additional combat troops. Given their dependence on Putin to keep themselves in power, separatists leaders responded by engaging in waves of forced mobilization of local residents, yielding several thousand additional troops. Similarly, Putin turned to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for additional support, since he was likewise dependent on Kremlin support to maintain his grip on power. Kadyrov responded by forming several new battalions of irregular Chechen militias for missions in occupied Ukraine.
The Kremlin also ordered governors in Russia’s far-flung regions (oblasts) to form “volunteer battalions” made up of local recruits, irregular units that would fight somewhat independently from the national army. The theory was that potential recruits would be more susceptible to joining battalions of their own local compatriots. Although Russia formed 52 such units during the first year of war, most fell well short of battalion strength.
Russia also relied on private military contractors, especially the Wagner Group, to recruit additional combat personnel. While Wagner succeeded in recruiting a few thousand former combat soldiers attracted by its elite reputation, they were ultimately forced to turn to prisoner recruiting to sustain their ranks. Taken together, Russia’s first round of covert mobilization methods enjoyed some success, but still fell well short of replacing combat losses at the front.
The bill for Putin’s half-hearted covert mobilization effort finally came due in September 2022, when numerically superior Ukrainian forces launched successful counteroffensives at Kharkiv and Kerson, forcing large-scale withdrawals of Russian forces. At one point, Ukraine’s counteroffensive at Kharkiv threatened to collapse the front, placing Russian forces to the south in great danger of being cut off from their communication lines.
Putin’s Partial Mobilization of Reservists
Faced with the looming specter of defeat, Putin finally ordered the partial mobilization of 300,000 Russian reservists. Partial mobilization proved to be a chaotic affair, undermined by years of underfunding, neglect, and incomplete reforms. For example, Russian commissars desperate to meet induction quotas often simply rounded up civilians in their respective regions. Moreover, activated reservists were often given limited training and aging equipment before being rushed to the front, where they often incurred high casualties. Partial mobilization created significant tensions inside Russia, manifested by criticism of the country’s leaders from various quarters inside Russia and by the mass departure of thousands of Russian nationals. Despite these problems, partial mobilization ultimately proved successful in generating sufficient additional combat troops to stabilize the front and eventually to restore the balance on the ground.
Round Two of Russia’s Covert Mobilization
Since then, Putin has taken extraordinary steps to avoid another round of partial mobilization. In late 2022, the Kremlin returned to the covert mobilization strategy that Moscow had employed during the initial phase of the war—with modifications. Russian leaders centered the campaign on three principal lines of effort: Recruiting additional irregular volunteer battalions from the various oblasts, allowing private military contractors like the Wagner Group to greatly expand recruiting of Russian prisoners, and revitalizing efforts to recruit contract soldiers. Contract soldiers have been especially important this recent period, lured by a focused information campaign designed to appeal to patriotism as well as exorbitant salaries and terms as short as three months. Collectively, contractor recruiting had far greater success in 2023 than it did in 2022, reportedly attracting well over 100,000 new recruits.
But even those recruitment successes have come under pressure in the face of ongoing heavy losses at the front. Reports inside Russia indicate that contractor recruiting may be approaching its practical limits. Such challenges have driven the Kremlin to pursue even more radical measures to avoid another round of partial mobilization. This includes the recent deployment of North Korean combat troops to the Kursk region, possibly to support Russian efforts to recapture Russian territory occupied by Ukraine earlier this year. For the past two years, Russia’s covert mobilization efforts have succeeded in delivering large numbers of additional combat troops to support the war effort. It remains to be seen, however, whether the Kremlin can sustain ongoing combat operations without ordering the very thing that covert mobilization was meant to avoid: another politically costly round of partial mobilization.
