Putin's Four Attempts at Stealth Mobilization That 'Drained the Pool'

Russia's controversial bid to draft civilians into its struggling army in Ukraine is doomed to failure because Moscow has already "drained the pool" of recruits, according to military experts.

On Wednesday, Putin announced plans for a "partial mobilization" to call up reservists and people who had already served in the army, such as men who had previously undertaken mandatory one-year training stints. The move sparked widespread protests and an exodus towards neighboring country such as Georgia as men tried to flee before they were called up. Russians who refuse to fight will face 10-year prison sentences under a new law signed on Saturday.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a defense and foreign affairs think tank based in Washington D.C., released a lengthy report on Sunday detailing why Vladimir Putin's measures are likely to have little effect on his troops' success on the battlefield.

"Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to overcome fundamental structural challenges in attempting to mobilize large numbers of Russians to continue his war in Ukraine," the report states in its opening sentence.

"The 'partial mobilization' he ordered on September 21 will generate additional forces but inefficiently and with high domestic, social, and political costs. The forces generated by this 'partial mobilization,' critically, are very unlikely to add substantially to the Russian military's net combat power in 2022.

"Putin has already conducted at least four attempts at mobilization in the last year, likely draining the pool of available combat-ready (and willing) reservists ahead of the 'partial mobilization.'"

The four previous attempts at mobilization began back in fall 2021, when an initiative called the Russian Combat Army Reserve (Russian acronym BARS) was launched. But hopes of recruiting 100,000 soldiers were dashed and the drive generated "only a fraction of its target," according to ISW.

The second attempt was a smaller involuntary mobilization among some of Russia's regular reserves before the invasion of Ukraine, although little is known about this process.

A third drive followed in March 2022, just a month into the invasion as the scale of Russian losses became clear, and the fourth mobilization wave began in June 2022, when Putin created "volunteer battalions."

It's not clear how many recruits these previous four drives managed to drum up for the front lines.

The claims that the latest mobilization attempt is unlikely to work come as part of a series of analysis reports since Putin invaded Ukraine back in February, sparking a bloody war that has left tens of thousands of his own people dead and killed and injured thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

The analysis by ISW goes on to detail a string of reasons why Putin's conscription tactics will not work.

Until 2008, Russia operated a universal conscription model under which men undertook a mandatory two-year stint in the armed forces to ensure that all males had military training. But in 2008, after the financial crisis, Russia started to move towards an all-volunteer military, although this process was never fully completed. Today's Russian army is made up of professional soldiers and conscripts serving for one year.

As ISW notes: "The most recent 'partial mobilization' will draw mainly on Russians who have demonstrated that they do not wish to fight by their failures to join 'volunteer battalions' or enter the BARS program. It may also be drawing on less-qualified involuntary reservists as well, assuming previous involuntary mobilizations pulled in the readiest individuals."

Another reason provided by the ISW for the likely failure of Putin's push for more recruits is that "conducting voluntary and involuntary mobilization efforts simultaneously is likely straining the bureaucrats responsible for these efforts."

People have been particularly shocked by the sudden mobilization because Putin has repeatedly insisted there is no war taking place, only a "special military operation."

In addition, there are no Ukrainians or foreign soldiers on Russian soil, nor is there any threat of invasion, and mobilization under such circumstances seems incongruous to many. Analysts noted that the "protests and resistance to involuntary mobilization" are a reflection of Putin's "repeated and surprising failures to prepare his population for a major war."

The report is hard-hitting in its conclusion: "Russia will mobilize reservists for this conflict. The process will be ugly, the quality of the reservists poor, and their motivation to fight likely even worse. But the systems are sufficiently in place to allow military commissars and other Russian officials to find people and send them to training units and thence to war... [But] this mobilization will not affect the course of the conflict in 2022 and may not have a very dramatic impact on Russia's ability to sustain its current level of effort into 2023."

Newsweek has reached out to Russia's Foreign Ministry and Ukraine's Ministry of Defense for comment.