The Vyorstka Telegram channel on March 22 cited four sources close to the presidential office and Defense Ministry as saying that Moscow plans to soon announce a new wave of military mobilization that would seek to enlist up to 300,000 people to bolster its troops involved in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
According to the sources, the idea to announce the mobilization came about because of the decreasing number of people willing to go to the war.
After President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization in September 2022, tens of thousands of Russian men fled the country to avoid enlistment.
Meanwhile, Mark Denisov, the ombudsman in Russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai, said on March 21 that several penitentiaries in the Siberian region will be shut down this year due to the ongoing recruitment of inmates for the war.
Denisov's statement came two days after the Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma, approved in the final reading a bill allowing inmates to change their prison terms to suspended sentences without presidential clemency decrees after they sign contracts with the Defense Ministry.
In November, the Kremlin admitted to recruiting inmates to the war in Ukraine saying they "are atoning for their guilt with blood."