Russia has replaced its 2022 mass call-up with an expensive, incentive-heavy recruitment system, but public evidence does not establish whether it can consistently outpace battlefield losses or turn new recruits into effective combat units.5 6 7
By PAI
Aug. 30, 2026
Russia’s ability to sustain its war against Ukraine depends on more than the number of people it can place in uniform. It must recruit, train, equip, command and replace troops fast enough to maintain operations while absorbing casualties. A recent LinkedIn post by Hamlet Yousef argued that the Kremlin can mobilize people but not motivation, and warned that Moscow could mistake additional manpower for combat power.1
The available evidence supports a narrower conclusion. Russia has sustained a large force through a combination of the 2022 partial mobilization, contract enlistment and escalating financial incentives. Its recruitment system shows signs of rising cost and pressure, but the most recent public estimates of recruiting and losses overlap. That makes claims of either an imminent Russian manpower collapse or an assured Russian surplus premature.5 6 7
The accounting problem
The scale of Russian losses is difficult to measure because governments and researchers use different definitions and incomplete data. “Casualties” can include people killed, wounded, missing or otherwise removed from service; a wounded soldier who returns to duty has a different effect on force strength from one who is permanently disabled. Russia does not publish a comprehensive, independently verifiable account of its losses or recruitment.7
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its 2025 Annual Threat Assessment that Russia had suffered more than 750,000 dead and wounded in Ukraine, while also “regularly” generating enough personnel to replace losses and form new units for attacks on several axes. The assessment nevertheless identified troop quality, corruption and demographic pressures as long-term constraints.3
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, or IISS, offered a separate snapshot. It estimated that, by early January 2025, at least 172,000 Russian troops had been killed and 611,000 wounded since the full-scale invasion began; it assessed that recruitment, including mobilization and prison recruitment, had generated about 976,000 personnel for the war. IISS estimated that up to 617,000 troops, including recoverable wounded and personnel in training, were deployed in or near Ukraine in late December 2024.4
More recent public indicators point in different directions. Janis Kluge, a researcher of Russia’s war economy, calculated from Russian Finance Ministry spending that the federal government paid recruitment bonuses for 71,216 new contract soldiers in the first quarter of 2026, or about 800 a day. He reported that regional data later indicated a return to roughly 1,000 contracts a day in the second quarter, while cautioning that bonus spending and official announcements do not perfectly align.5
The Institute for the Study of War, citing Ukraine’s government-backed “I Want to Live” initiative, reported in April that Russia recruited an average of 940 contract soldiers a day during the first three months of 2026, below the 1,100 to 1,150 daily rate the initiative said would be required to meet a stated annual target of 409,000. The assessment said Russian authorities had raised bonuses and sought other sources of recruits. Those are Ukrainian-sourced figures, not independently audited Russian personnel records.6
A July review by Russia Matters compared published estimates and placed Russian losses at about 5,000 to 8,200 personnel a week and recruitment at about 5,500 to 8,000 a week. Its central finding was methodological rather than predictive: The ranges overlap too broadly to show consistently whether Russia is losing more personnel than it recruits. The review also noted that official estimates may reflect institutional bias and that loss categories are not consistently defined.7
From partial mobilization to financial inducement
Russia formally declared a partial mobilization on Sept. 21, 2022. The Kremlin’s decree authorized the call-up of Russian citizens for service and granted those called up the status of contract military personnel; it also provided draft exemptions for employees of defense companies and directed the government to set other exemptions.2
The post-2022 system has increasingly relied on paid enlistment rather than another nationwide call-up. Vladislav Inozemtsev, a Russian economist, uses the term “deathonomics” for a system in which high military pay, signing bonuses and death benefits help build a force drawn disproportionately from economically vulnerable groups. In a February 2026 report for the French Institute of International Relations, he estimated that military salaries and death gratuities total 3 trillion to 4 trillion rubles a year, or close to 2% of Russian gross domestic product. That estimate is an analysis, not an official Russian budget total.8
The incentives can be substantial by Russian wage standards. A September 2025 Institute for the Study of War assessment documented regional offers that included debt relief, signing payments and specialized pay for particular skills. It reported that recruiters also used intermediaries paid for referrals and that Russian officials and informal recruiters employed financial incentives, deception and coercion, including against some foreigners and conscripts. The report attributed individual cases to the sources it reviewed; they should not be treated as a comprehensive count of Russian recruiting practices.9
This approach gives the Kremlin a way to distribute the immediate burden of service unevenly and to avoid the political disruption of another broad involuntary call-up. Inozemtsev wrote that the 2022 mobilization and the wider war produced a large emigration wave, while the subsequent absence of mass mobilization made frontline service appear more private to much of the public.8 ISW similarly assessed in April that Russian President Vladimir Putin was likely seeking to avoid the backlash of a new limited reserve call-up.6
But cash payments are not, by themselves, evidence that recruits lack commitment, nor do they show how many recruits will remain fit for service. They are better understood as a price signal: Authorities are using compensation to obtain people for a war whose labor demands have remained high. Whether that compensation produces a durable pool of trained personnel is a separate question.5 8
Why personnel totals are not combat power
Force generation is the process of producing units that can carry out military missions. It includes personnel, training, leaders, weapons, ammunition, logistics, maintenance and the ability to integrate units into operations. A personnel intake number alone therefore cannot show how much offensive capability Russia has added.
Russia has demonstrated that it can adapt under pressure. The ODNI assessed that Russian forces improved their use of electronic warfare and unmanned systems after early shortcomings. It also said Moscow’s defense spending, domestic industrial investment and imports of ammunition and drones from Iran and artillery shells from North Korea had helped Russia sustain its war effort.3
At the same time, materiel and training constraints limit what additional recruits can do. IISS estimated that Russia lost about 1,400 main battle tanks and more than 3,700 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers in 2024, and about 14,000 such vehicles since the full-scale invasion began. It found that Russia had refurbished or built more than 1,500 tanks and about 2,800 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers in 2024, but warned that remaining Soviet-era equipment in storage was likely deteriorated and that a shortage of modern infantry carriers persisted.4
IISS concluded that Russia had reconstituted and adapted enough to continue offensive operations for at least another year, albeit at high human and equipment costs. That finding is an important counterweight to assertions that a declining recruitment rate necessarily prevents further Russian attacks.4
The Russian Defense Ministry has also acknowledged that recruitment is only one part of the problem. In a September 2025 review of Defense Minister Andrei Belousov’s stated priorities, ISW reported that the ministry sought to improve logistics, drone training, tactical awareness and officer education, while building a digital military-registration system. The assessment said the system could strengthen Russia’s capacity to summon conscripts and reservists, although it did not establish that a new mass mobilization had been ordered.9
For Ukraine and its partners, the practical implication is that force assessment should track usable formations, not headline recruiting claims. Indicators include recruits who complete training, the availability and condition of armored vehicles, artillery ammunition and drone systems, the quality of junior leadership, and the ability of units to sustain operations after casualties. The current public record supports scrutiny of each of those measures, not a single manpower figure.3 4 9
A historical comparison, with limits
Yousef’s post invokes the Soviet war in Afghanistan as a warning about the political and economic costs of a protracted conflict.1 The comparison has limits: The Soviet Union fought a different war, in a different political and international setting. It cannot determine the outcome in Ukraine.
It does illustrate the danger of reducing military endurance to troop totals. The U.S. State Department’s historical account says the Soviet intervention that began in December 1979 became a 10-year effort to subdue the Afghan civil war. A National Security Archive collection of declassified Soviet-era material says the conflict contributed to the delegitimization of Communist Party rule, demoralized the army and exposed shortcomings in planning and preparation. It describes Afghanistan as one of several factors that aggravated internal dynamics before the Soviet Union’s dissolution, not as a sole cause.10 11
Russia’s present system may remain capable of replacing people and mounting attacks even as its costs rise. Conversely, a shortfall in contracts would not automatically end the war; Moscow could increase bonuses, redirect manpower, rely more heavily on coercion or take the politically costlier step of another call-up. The evidence does not permit a confident forecast of which option it will choose.5 6 7 9
The more reliable test is ongoing, not rhetorical: Compare verified recruitment with clearly defined losses, then judge whether Russia can equip, train and lead the formations it is raising. On that measure, Moscow has shown resilience as well as vulnerabilities, and the balance remains contested.3 4 7