Can Russia Replace Its Losses? Rob Lee on Recruitment

Russia is replacing its losses and not much more: Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says its attrition rate this year is basically level with its recruitment rate. Last year, he thinks, 80% of new recruits went straight in as combat replacements, so the new divisions Russia tried to build never materialised.

Lee gave this assessment in Kyiv on 14 August 2026, alongside Francis Farrell, a senior reporter at the Kyiv Independent, in "What Happens If Russia Mobilizes". It is a snapshot of a ratio, not a forecast, and Lee is careful to say so. What makes it worth reading now is the mechanism underneath it: how Russia keeps the numbers up without a mobilisation decree, why the decree has not come, and what would change if it did.

How many men is Russia recruiting against its losses?

Lee's answer is that Russia is roughly meeting its numbers, not as much as it wants to, and no longer exceeding them as it did in previous years. The intake is enough to keep the army at strength. It is not enough to overcome Ukraine's defences.

The consequence shows up in force structure rather than in casualty tables. Russia has spent the last few years trying to form new units and could not, because it did not have enough new soldiers. When most of the intake is consumed replacing men killed or wounded, there is nothing left over to build with. This year, in Lee's words, "they don't have enough people to build new units."

It also shows up on the map. Because manpower has become more difficult, Lee says, Russia has concentrated on narrower parts of the front. It was pushed back in Zaporizhzhia, lost ground in the Dnipropetrovsk direction, and was pushed back on the Lyman direction while advancing in Donetsk Oblast.

Hear Rob Lee set out the recruitment ratio at 1:14:38.

How does Russia recruit without a mobilisation decree?

Russia's model has been volunteer recruitment at high pay. People sign, they arrive, and Lee says many are killed or wounded within a month or two of signing their contracts.

What has changed is how the signatures are obtained. The number of men coerced into signing under threat has increased, and Lee calls the result "kind of like covert mobilization". Asked whether debtors are under pressure, Lee gives a more concrete answer: police officers are given a quota. They are told to get one or two men a month to sign a contract, and if they do, they receive a financial bonus.

That is the whole machine in one sentence: a performance target, attached to an incentive, run through an institution that already exists. It needs no announcement and costs Vladimir Putin no political capital.

Around it, Lee describes "a whole new economy in Russia based around the war". The men who sign get a lot of money. The men who recruit them get a lot of money. The effect is a strange wealth redistribution inside the country. "The regions are getting rich," because little towns are getting more money; people are getting killed, but they are also getting more money, and prices are up too.

Earlier in the same discussion Farrell lists the sources of Russia's expendable assault infantry: volunteer recruiting, supplemented by prisoners, foreigners and people who were in effect mobilised by coercion. Ukraine, he says, does not have that option. Ievgen Malik describes the prison end of that pipeline in why Russia hurries prisoner exchanges only for conscripts.

Why has Putin not ordered a new mobilisation?

Lee's reason is political risk. "There's a reason why Putin hasn't done this since 2022." Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia is planning a mobilisation, and Lee treats it as the first of several X factors rather than a certainty.

He also describes what a mobilisation might look like, which is less dramatic than the word suggests. It need not mean a massive intake in a single month. It might simply mean raising the number of men taken each month, on top of regular recruitment.

Lee does not think the risk would stop Putin. Russia saw protests in the first week or two of the full-scale invasion, and again for a week or two during the 2022 mobilisation, and nothing significant since. Putin probably thinks he can do it again, Lee says, "and he's probably right, honestly."

What would a mobilisation change?

It would buy the one thing the current system cannot: enough men to form new units. Lee is precise about their quality. They would not be well equipped and would not have armour. But they could let Russia open a new front somewhere else. He notes there has been talk about Chernihiv for some time, and a possible refocus on Sumy and Kharkiv.

The next mobilisation would also run better than the last one. As the panel puts it, it would be "a very dangerous moment for both sides", because Russia is now prepared: border control is set up, e-registration is set up, and it will not repeat the mistake of letting people leave over the border. Samuel Cook calls it crossing the Rubicon, with Putin saying he is in this for another three years.

Farrell names the part he finds more frightening than the extra troops. The immediate threat is heavier attacks where Russia already attacks, or a new front. The scarier thing, he says, is what a mobilisation would prove: the "political conviction to move beyond that clear reluctance" and commit to a fight that could go on for years.

Where is Russia's breaking point?

Lee will not name one. All the talk about refineries, about Wildberries and the rest imposes real costs on Russia, he says, "but where is the breaking point? No one can say." Russia has shown it can take very heavy costs, and it is not clear when Russians would say enough. Is mobilisation that point? "Maybe, but maybe it's not. If it's not, it will be a big problem for Ukraine."

He does report pressure from inside. Russian internal projections, he says, warned that fighting too long into 2026 would do the economy long-term damage. His understanding is that senior Russian officials have told Putin the war's objectives cannot be achieved and the costs are very heavy, and some pro-Russian foreign policy journals have argued Russia should declare victory and move on. Farrell adds a caution that applies to all of it: observers can be victims of the narrative rollercoaster too. And Lee's own record of the war so far is that Putin has doubled down at every opportunity when he could have walked away with something.

What else could tip the balance?

Lee names two other X factors. The first is North Korea. Zelenskyy has mentioned 30,000 to 50,000 North Korean troops being deployed to Russia, and Lee says their purpose is not clear. The soldiers committed earlier fought only in Kursk. They were tough, not ready for FPV warfare, and have learned since. Even 10,000 added to Russia's force in Sumy would be a significant change, and Ukraine would probably have to reinforce that direction.

The second is Russian tactical learning. Ukraine has held with very few infantry by using drones, and that has relied on Russia not adapting well at the tactical level. Lee singles out a mechanised assault in the Azov Corps area as sophisticated, and warns that the same thing, tried against a different corps in poor October or November weather, might be enough for a breach. His fuller account of that assault, tanks absorbing 10 to 20 FPVs each, is in how many FPV drones it takes to stop a Russian tank.

The reason this matters is the Ukrainian side of the same ledger. Lee recalls last August, when Russian infiltration groups made it about 18 kilometres past the front line, walking for several days with no one stopping them, because non-infantry were holding the line and units were not coordinating.

Why Lee wants Ukraine planning for a long war

Lee's conclusion is about Ukraine, not Russia. Because nobody knows where the breaking point is, he argues, Ukraine's strategy has to focus on sustainability. The war could have hot and cold phases, or a ceasefire and a restart six months later. Men who have served four and a half years are tired, and some may need a year off if they are to be useful two years from now.

He also puts a clock on Russia's aims. If Russia takes the rest of Donetsk Oblast, it will not be in 2026; it will run into 2027 at least. Chasiv Yar took two years, and a battle for Kramatorsk and Sloviansk could take longer.