Fewer and fewer Russians are willing to sign military contracts, and the authorities are beginning to weigh a new wave of mobilization, Meduza’s sources say, and the outlets iStories and Verstka report.

Contract recruitment across Russia fell by one and a half times in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with the same period the previous year, according to iStories calculations based on federal budget expenditure data.

The pace of recruitment kept falling into early 2026. Roughly 800 people per day were signing contracts in the first quarter of 2026 — the lowest figure in three years — according to data from Janis Kluge, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, based on federal budget payment data. In the second quarter of 2026, however, the number of contracts signed rose to approximately 1,000 per day, according to Kluge’s estimates based on regional budget payment data.

Sources in several Russian regions told journalists that recruiting contract soldiers has grown increasingly difficult. The flow of people willing to sign up keeps shrinking, a senior military officer at a unit in Siberia said. “And yet no one has canceled the recruitment quota — we have to send new recruits every month,” he said. A source at a draft office in the same region said recruitment is now happening “mostly through cops” — meaning detainees are being offered military contracts in exchange for dropped charges.

Those who can be persuaded by various means to sign are often barely fit for service. “Some are taken from prison, some off the street. Criminals, and already at such an age and with such health problems that they can barely stand,” one serviceman told journalists. “They’re a burden on everyone. What can you even teach them? They can’t walk in full gear; carrying 20 kilograms (44 pounds) is too much for them. They’re disposable.” Many of the new contract soldiers are deserting from the front, sources said. Units, they added, are constantly understaffed.

The difficulties in recruiting new contract soldiers, combined with slowing Russian military advances at the front, are pushing the authorities to intensify propaganda and raise payments. Russians are also being lured to the front with promises of service in the rear — as drivers or construction workers, for example. However, the contracts they sign are standard, and those who sign them can be sent to any unit.

The Kremlin is also weighing more radical options, including a new wave of mobilization, according to eight sources working with Russia’s Presidential Administration who spoke to iStories and Verstka, along with sources close to the security forces.

Mobilization is being discussed at all levels, one source said, adding that “rumors are circulating” but that no final decision has been made. October is one possibility — after elections to the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, the source said. Another source had also heard that “something could start” as early as October, though that person also stressed that various scenarios are being discussed, including mobilization, but that everything is still “only rumors.”

A source who oversees the recruitment process at one of Russia’s state corporations said that preparatory measures “for what will never be called mobilization” have been underway “for several months already.”

Meduza’s sources are also discussing the possibility of a new wave of mobilization. One senior regional official said the federal government had instructed administrations at various levels to cut 10 to 15% of their staff by October 1. The same cuts, according to the official, are to take place at regional branches of federal agencies. An official from another region had also heard about the planned cuts. “Men will be among those laid off. But there was no explicit instruction that this is, you know, for mobilization,” the official said.

Some sources speaking to iStories and Verstka also noted that a more “tempered option” is possible. “There is discussion of rotating reservists who are currently involved in rear-area logistics,” a source working on media affairs in Russia’s Presidential Administration told journalists. Those reservists, the source said, would be transferred to active units in place of mobilized soldiers, who would be sent to the rear or demobilized.

Konrad Muzyka, director of the Polish analytical firm Rochan Consulting, believes Russia is unlikely to avoid partial mobilization. He told the Financial Times that the Kremlin would look for different ways to change the situation at the front. “[B]ut apart from nukes, I don’t think they can really do much to change the course of how the fighting is going to develop over the course of the next months, unless they announce another partial mobilization,” he said.