The Russian woman, who identified herself as Yelena, called into the live teleconference hosted by the governor of the Leningrad region earlier this month, complaining about the conditions her husband was fighting under in Ukraine and pleading for help for her exhausted spouse.
"My husband has been fighting, living, sleeping, eating in a trench for almost 10 months now. He has never been on leave during this time. Of course, it's enormous physical and moral fatigue. I would even say exhaustion," she said in the September 4 call. "We, the wives, children, mothers of the mobilized send humanitarian aid…. We took all the men's work on ourselves, everyday life, raising children. But human resources are not limitless."
The governor, Aleksandr Drozdenko, promised to do what he could: "Thank you for your support, for the front, for your husbands, brothers, sons, for their return home. Onward to victory!"
Yelena's complaints, though impossible to verify, are not isolated. They're the latest in a growing litany of grievances from soldiers, their spouses and parents, and supporters of Russia's war underscoring long-known systemic problems within Russia's armed forces. The weight of the complaints has added to calls from some commanders, hawkish military bloggers, and nationalists that Russia needs more soldiers -- just as the Kremlin has shown some potential signs that it is about to embark on a new effort to bolster its fighting forces.
Just don't call it a mobilization.
"I'm not sure that another wave of mobilization will [occur] in the next few weeks. But I'm sure" it will happen, said Ian Matveev, a Russian military analyst affiliated with the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization set up by imprisoned opposition activist Aleksei Navalny.
"It's connected with the necessity of war. Russian government and military officials are trying to find new troops for voluntary contracts now. But they aren't successful now. And there's no successes at the front," Matveev said. "It makes mobilization inevitable."
"There is no sense to speculate on mobilization. We will see the reality soon," said Pavel Luzin, a Russian military analyst and visiting scholar at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts.
Digital Draft
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Kremlin has struggled to insulate the wider Russian population from the grim realities of war -- something increasingly difficult as estimates of Russian casualties top as many as 120,000 dead and 180,000 wounded.
In September 2022, after months of stealthy recruiting efforts and with battlefield progress stalled, the Kremlin announced a mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Russians. It was the country's first since World War II and was a tacit admission that the Kremlin faced serious battlefield difficulties, bringing the war closer to home for ordinary Russians.
Some 300,000 Russians were ultimately mobilized and deployed. Along with soldiers from the Wagner mercenary group, which enlisted thousands of prison inmates, the effort stabilized Russian lines, though it failed to allow for any major new offensives against Ukrainian forces.
The recruitment and mobilization efforts shined a harsh light on the antiquated systems used by military recruiters to identify eligible men and compel them to serve.
Authorities responded by modernizing their computer systems to track eligible men, and lawmakers moved to set up a digital database that makes it easier to serve draft papers. The system relies on an existing national government web portal called Gosuslugi, which Russians use to do things such as pay taxes or apply for pension or disability benefits.
Under a new law, a person can be penalized for ignoring draft notices, regardless of whether they use Gosuslugi, including being banned from leaving the country, prohibited from driving, or getting a home or registering small businesses.
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More recently, lawmakers moved to raise the age limit for Russians in the military reserve by five years. And just this week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu issued new orders listing health conditions and diseases that will exempt draft-age men from service.
"Throughout this year, we've seen how the Russian government is frantically trying to patch up all these seams and holes, to establish this entire mobilization procedure," said Sergei Krivenko, director of Citizen and Army, a Russian rights group that provides legal representation to conscripted soldiers.
"Amendments and electronic summonses are being adopted, fines are being tightened, and this whole system is being adjusted," he told Current Time, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. "And this is the most important indicator that the military registration and enlistment office system is being streamlined: for conscription and for mobilization, of course."
At the beginning of September, an edict purportedly signed by Shoigu circulated on Telegram and other social media channels, detailing an upcoming mobilization order. It was derided as a fake by some officials, including Andrei Kartapolov, an influential lawmaker and head of the Defense Committee in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament.
That was preceded by other unconfirmed reports on Telegram, including one that said the Kremlin's Security Council had settled on a plan for 1.2 million draft summonses to be sent out beginning September 25, with about one-third of that figure targeted for actual mobilization.
The question of a new mobilization was also raised earlier this week at an economic forum in the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok, attended by President Vladimir Putin. There was no need, Putin said, because 270,000 people had volunteered for military service over the past six to seven months.
"People willingly enroll in the military under today's conditions, realizing that they will ultimately end up at the front," he said on September 12. "Our men, Russian men, realizing that they can give their lives for the motherland or be seriously wounded, still do it, consciously and voluntarily, defending the interests of the motherland."
That same day, however, a closely read Telegram channel called VChK-OGPU -- which is known for leaks from the Federal Security Service, Russia's main domestic intelligence agency -- published a post saying preparations were already under way for the second wave of mobilization.
The measures, the post said, were delayed until after countrywide local and regional elections finished on September 10, and needed to be put in place before the presidential election in March 2024, in which Putin is expected to run again.
The issue, according to the VChK-OGPU post, had sparked "severe disagreements" among hawkish national-security officials and the Presidential Administration, an influential, domestic-policy, executive-branch entity within the Kremlin.
The Presidential Administration, "fearing an unpredictable reaction from both the bottom and the very top, insists on maintaining the current order, while the [hawks], having fallen into euphoria, have decided to go all-in," it said.
In its daily report on September 11, the Ukrainian military's General Staff, which has sought to exaggerate Russian problems as a part of its propaganda and information warfare efforts, said heavy casualties will force Russian commanders to start mass mobilization, aiming for between 400,000 to 700,000 people, along with another 40,000 people from the Russian region of Chechnya.
In an interview with a regional TV channel on September 1, Andrei Gurulyov, another influential Duma lawmaker who is also known for close ties to military officials, also batted away the rumors of a new mobilization, saying Russia's system of equipping, arming, training, and deploying soldiers wasn't capable of processing large numbers all at once.
Moreover, Russia's next biannual conscription -- whereby all men between 18-27 are obliged to serve one year in the armed forces -- is set to begin on October 1. Though the law forbids deploying those conscripts to Ukraine, they will still need to be equipped, clothed, and transported to training bases -- at the same time any possible mass mobilization might occur.
"Someone is always trying to stir up trouble, rumors of mobilization, and for what?" Gurulyov said in the interview. "Yes, today there is a war going on. Today people have been sent, they're going, and we have our own obligations to fulfill in our region.
"But there's a second point: In order to mobilize masses -- let's say mobilize 3 million troops -- we need to get them weapons, equipment, clothing, ammunition, the means for fighting, for logistics, fuel, food, and everything else," he said. "To mobilize people all at once, the industrial complex just won't be able to respond."
That, experts say, suggests that Russian recruiters may simply rely on the existing system of recruitment: patriotic advertising campaigns that highlight lucrative salaries and benefits for volunteer soldiers, along with veterans' pensions and death benefits for widows.
"Look, it won't happen in the near future, because the conscription for military service begins October 1," Mikhail Salkin, a Russian lawyer and rights activist, told RFE/RL. "Accordingly, the military registration and enlistment offices simply cannot cope with the processing and broad mobilization of conscripts. And our conscription lasts until December, so I think that this will definitely not happen during the conscription period.
"And then we have a presidential election, under which, probably, these sorts of stressful situations, like mobilization, won't happen publicly," Salkin said.
A new round of mobilization would repeat the same problems experienced last year, Luzin said, but would also require more coercion and cause more economic -- and political -- disruption.
Recruiters could also opt to broaden short-term contracts for conscripted soldiers: younger men who are about to complete their mandatory service, he said.
The benefit to that, he said, is that "18-year-old stupid and badly trained soldiers are much better than 35-year-old stupid, and badly trained ones [and] 18-year-old soldiers can be better motivated by money they have never seen."
"Anyway, there is a deficit of bottom-level commanders within the Russian armed forces," he said. "So, you may mobilize people but there is [still] a problem with commanders."
'If The Authorities Refute Something, It Will Definitely Happen'
Still, the Kremlin -- and in particular, the Presidential Administration, which keeps a close eye on national sentiment and public opinion -- has reportedly begun to respond more aggressively to talk of a new mobilization.
At least two Russian organizations that are considered pro-government have received "urgent requests" from the Presidential Administration to refrain from covering any rumors of a new mobilization. According to the online news site Meduza, media have even been ordered to not cover public refutations or denials by officials or Duma lawmakers of such rumors.
"And as we all know in Russia, if the authorities refute something, then it will definitely happen," one journalist at a Russian tabloid told Meduza.
Soldiers who have served in Ukraine, meanwhile, also say they're expecting another mobilization.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Idel.Realities, while on leave from fighting in Ukraine, Almaz, a Tatar man who previously served in Chechnya, said the Ukraine conflict was "a thousand times more terrible."
The Ukrainians "have a lot of weapons. On our side, many people are dying, and there aren't enough people. There will be a new mobilization. It's unavoidable."
