Russia is mobilising again

Since the spring, speculation has built up within Russia, and among Ukrainian officials and Western commentators that President Putin will order a renewed mobilisation call, probably following parliamentary elections in September. Speculation is based on what is considered to be a combination of the exhaustion of Russian military capacity and growing domestic opposition to the war effort. For some, the current costs of the campaigning are ‘untenable’: a sharp drop in recruitment means that the military cannot replace the heavy losses incurred in the spring and summer offensives. For others, it would represent an effort to coerce society and the elite into supporting continued campaigning and preserving ‘the status quo’.

In fact, the question of whether Moscow will order a renewed mobilisation is one that keeps emerging, for instance in 2023, and then again in 2024 during Ukraine’s offensive into the Kursk region. Moreover, recent moves within Russia, such as exercises held to test mobilisation readiness, as well as the escalatory trajectory of relations between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia – many in NATO anticipate a Russian attack by 2030 – make this an essential question. But what does ‘mobilisation’ actually mean to Moscow? What causes Moscow to announce it, and what are the guiding assumptions or conditions?

For their part, it should be noted, Russian officials – including Putin – have long and repeatedly denied the need for further rounds of mobilisation. In the spring, Defence Minister Andrei Belousov stated that recruitment remains sufficient. In early August, Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin echoed other officials who have said that mobilising the economy is not only unnecessary, but would actually undermine Russia’s ability to wage the campaign.

Moscow officially defines mobilisation as ‘a complex of state measures for activating the resource strength and capabilities of the country for the achievement of military-political aims’. This includes ‘practical measures for a transition onto a war footing of the state’s military, economic and state institutions at all levels (general mobilisation) or some part thereof (partial)’. This can be carried out ‘openly’ or ‘secretly’, and an announcement is the responsibility of the head of state and highest organs of the state. The most important conditions for successful fulfilment of mobilisation include: having sufficient numbers of trained people to bring units up to strength and create new formations, the provision in peacetime of the necessary arms, equipment, ammunition and fuel, and a clearly structured system for announcing mobilisation and gathering and distributing the resources associated with it.

In this official definition, mobilisation has two main pillars: economic and military. The mobilisation of the economy is the foundation of general mobilisation and is reflected in the reorganisation of state effort and conversion of industry, natural resources, transport and communications, including at regional and municipal levels, to the service of the armed forces and the activities of the state in wartime.

Finally, mobilisation is conducted in stages. The first is preparation (podgotovka), when a war could appear, and during which the agencies are prepared to deploy forces and mobilise the economy for war. If war becomes imminent, the leadership announces the second stage – readiness (gotovnost) – when the armed forces are brought to full strength, concentrated and deployed.

With this in mind, the first point to make is a reminder that Russia is already operating under mobilisation legislation that Putin initiated in autumn 2022, calling up some 300,000 reservists and that remains in force. However, the Russian leadership has been shifting the state towards a mobilisation preparation footing since the early-to-mid 2010s, running exercises to test and improve regional mobilisation processes and to coordinate ministries and regional authorities with the armed forces. These exercises revealed numerous flaws within the system, from regional governors failing in their roles to a lack of computers in commissariats, even in 2021. Then-Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu repeatedly asserted the need for all regional governors to undergo obligatory mobilisation education and the modernisation of the mobilisation process prior to launching the renewed assault on Ukraine in 2022.

A second point builds on this: while most attention is on a potential draft, the focus should be more on wider state capacity and the structure and organisation of the economy. The legislation adopted in and since 2022 set out the conditions of service for those called up, but also provided measures for government support for the defence industry to meet the requirements of the state defence order, and special conditions for transport, energy and communications in the regions in or neighbouring the combat zone. In October 2022, the leadership established a Government Coordination Council the better to organise the wider state effort for the ‘special war operation’.

The wider economy, while increasingly militarised, is not currently mobilised: price controls, centralised allocation of resources and widespread nationalisation of private sector assets have yet to appear. Nevertheless, the introduction of legislation authorising the government to assert administrative control over selected foreign and Russian companies deemed relevant to the stability of the economy – including through ‘temporary management’ regimes – sets permissive, anticipatory conditions, which, in some instances, are already being implemented. On 24 August, Putin signed an Executive Order on the protection of critical infrastructure that now authorises the ‘temporary management’ of companies that fail to protect or restore strategically important assets of the economy.

Finally, this long-standing shift towards mobilisation preparation reflects Moscow’s view of the intensifying sense of confrontation and conflict in international affairs. For some senior Russian observers, the world has entered a period akin to a 21st-century version of the Thirty Years War, with growing instability and the increasing use of force. Senior officials have long debated the need to prepare for conflict, including with NATO.

Mobilisation is a decision not just about preparation for a long confrontation, but about the escalation of state effort for a major war. Russian doctrine is revealing: mobilisation is deemed relevant to the conditions of a ‘regional’ war (one that involves several states in a region waged with national or coalition forces) or a ‘large-scale’ war (one between coalitions of states or the largest states in pursuit of radical military-political goals and requiring the mobilisation of all available material and spiritual resources).

Here lie the implications for NATO. Moscow sees campaigning in Ukraine as part of a larger, longer confrontation, one for which it has been preparing for over a decade: mobilisation represents both an effort to coordinate state power more effectively and an escalation of state effort.

Rumours will continue to swirl about another draft. Officials deny it, and prominent Russian observers remain sceptical. But the point is different: Russia is already on a (partial) mobilisation footing. The draft is an important feature of this, but the wider, whole-of-state activity is the more important foundation for Moscow’s activities.

This should re-orient thinking about the character of the confrontation between the Euro-Atlantic community and Russia, currently typified by a focus on Russian hybrid measures and a potential limited Russian invasion of NATO territory. To be sure, these are important concerns, but assessments must go deeper into the changing characteristics of Russian power over the short-to-medium term: in this case, Russia as a state already in ‘mobilisation preparation’.