“There is no scenario today that would require mobilization.” Vladimir Putin told a plenary session in Vladivostok, at the Eastern Economic Forum, on a Thursday in September. He did not stop at denial. He called the talk of a new call-up a “disinformation campaign by the enemy” timed to the State Duma elections later that month and meant to sway the result.
“As is well known, our people enlist voluntarily and sign a contract,” he added.
Few Russians take that at face value. Earlier the same week Putin had already waved off the rumors as “utter nonsense” and an “information attack” on Russia. The Kremlin has issued such denials many times since the autumn of 2022, when Putin did order a “partial mobilization” of reservists a few months into the full-scale invasion, amid a string of military setbacks. Draft-age men left the country in large numbers.
A decree that was never withdrawn
Meduza points out a detail that keeps the anxiety alive. The “partial” mobilization he announced on September 21, 2022 is technically still in effect, since he never signed a decree to end it. No one has actually been called up under it since the end of that fall. Legally, though, a summons could still be issued.
The wording of the latest denials does not help. Vasily Nebenzya, Moscow’s envoy at the U.N., said mobilization was not needed “at this moment.” Putin ruled the scenario out only “for today,” as Meduza reads him. The outlet recalls 2022: two days before the announcement, Andrey Kartapolov, who chairs the Duma defense committee, told Russians that a “general” mobilization was nothing to worry about. None followed, but only because the authorities chose the word “partial.”
Who is pushing the story
Russian officials say Ukraine is planting the rumors. Meduza does not dismiss the idea that Kyiv benefits from them: President Volodymyr Zelensky has forecast a forced draft publicly more than a dozen times in the last six months, and Western intelligence sources echo him behind closed doors. His core argument is that Russia needs fresh men to replace casualties, not to grow its army.
The numbers are disputed. The argument turns on one benchmark, 30,000 a month. Ukraine says Russia loses more men than that. Meduza says there is no reliable estimate of Russian losses for 2026, and its own earlier research never got near that figure. The German economist Janis Kluge looked at regional budget data, which pay for the lump sums given to contract soldiers, and counted about a thousand recruits arriving daily in the second quarter. That is 30,000 a month again. On his reading, the need for a new call-up is less acute than Kyiv and Western sources say.
Peace talk, and a harder front
In Vladivostok Putin also spoke of peace. “Is there a chance? In my view, yes, there is,” he told the forum, adding that the problem must be settled by Russia and Ukraine themselves, even as he thanked the United States, China and others trying to mediate.
His remarks came while Russia was hitting Kyiv with missile and drone barrages and Ukraine was striking deeper inside Russia, including online retailers. Putin described Zelenskyy’s warning about the risk to planes in Russian airspace, a result of Ukraine’s drone campaign, as “state terrorism.”
Meduza’s own verdict on the draft question is blunt: nobody outside Putin’s circle knows what he will decide, and the 2022 call-up, which sent hundreds of thousands to the front, left a trauma few Russians want to relive. By named lists alone, over 20,000 of the mobilized have died in the war.
Sources
- Putin denies fresh mobilization campaign in Ukraine war (DW)
- Putin dismisses rumors of another mobilization as 'nonsense.' But can Russia keep fighting without another draft? (Meduza)
