Ukraine says Russia may mobilize half million people this fall

Ukraine says Russia may be preparing a new wave of mobilization. This fall, Russia is planning to call up half a million people, Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said.

He warned that fall and winter will be intense, requiring Ukraine to hold in “very difficult infantry battles, where people, drones, KABs, and other instruments of death converge.”

Russia’s first deputy chief of staff Sergei Kiriyenko and General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov have assured Russian leader Vladimir Putin the mobilization would help defeat Ukraine, Kovalenko said, adding: “I know for certain that they are mistaken. Right now, we all need unity and effectiveness.”

Recruitment numbers are the reason the forecast is plausible

Russia has been failing to sign enough contract soldiers to cover its losses. Its 2026 losses have outrun its recruitment.

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service reported in mid-July that Russia signed only 195,000 military contracts against a target of 204,500, while losing 196,700 troops so far in 2026, and roughly 115,300 of them irretrievable and 80,400 injured.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in early 2026 that Russia planned to recruit around 409,000 troops and form at least 11 new divisions, drawing on a mobilization pool he estimated at more than 20 million.

The Kremlin’s unwritten deal with its society since has been that the war would not touch those who did not volunteer, and Moscow has filled its ranks instead with high-paid contract soldiers, prisoners, and foreign recruits precisely to avoid repeating that political shock.

Even Ukraine’s own official says it would not turn the war

Three weeks before this latest post, Kovalenko said that even if Russia announced a fall mobilization, it would only partially offset heavy losses.

“Even if such a decision is made in the fall, Russia will only be plugging gaps at the front caused by heavy losses and recruitment levels that remain below the rate of casualties,” he said then.

He concluded that the only real fix for Russia’s manpower problem is to end the war.