The question has a date attached to it, which is why it has become urgent rather than merely recurrent. Russia holds State Duma elections on September 18 to 20, and virtually every forecast that Vladimir Putin will order a new call-up places it immediately after that vote.
The most detailed claim comes from Kyiv. On August 27, the Office of the President of Ukraine released a briefing from the Defense Intelligence Directorate and the Foreign Intelligence Service stating that the Russian General Staff has already prepared a scenario for mobilizing an additional 600,000 people across 2026 and 2027, split evenly at 300,000 a year. According to that assessment, the intake would be used first to bring existing formations fighting in Ukraine up to full strength and to man units currently being formed. Oleg Ivashchenko, who heads Ukraine's military intelligence, has been careful in how he frames it, telling Ukrinform that there is as yet no indication any mobilization has been announced and that what intelligence is describing are plans under consideration rather than decisions taken.
The arithmetic underpinning the claim is the part that does not depend on trusting Ukrainian intelligence, because both sides publish figures pointing the same direction. Kyiv puts Russian personnel losses between January and July 2026 at roughly 240,000, of whom at least 140,000 are permanently out of the war, against 232,000 recruited on contract over the same months. Volodymyr Zelensky offered slightly different numbers in late July, some 225,500 killed or wounded during 2026 against approximately 221,000 recruited. Whichever set is closer, the pattern is a force consuming men marginally faster than it can sign them, in a war where the manpower requirement has not fallen.
