That is according to Bloomberg, which refers to people close to the Kremlin and the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukrinform reports.
Regional officials are leaving more than a third of their recruitment quotas unfilled on average. According to two anonymous sources, the situation may force Russia to consider a new mobilization wave. The Kremlin authorities may picture it as a rotation measure for frontline troops, one of the people said, while the other said a draft could be announced as early as the end of this year.
Russia's inability to repel the Ukrainian offensive and regain control of its border has exposed a lack of defense reserves. At the same time, Russia has hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine, where it faces mounting casualties as fighting has largely reached a stalemate.
The scale of Russian losses and inadequate replacement levels make it increasingly difficult to sustain the current strategy of slowly grinding out advances in Ukraine, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
Putin needs "around 500,000 people in the next 12 months to offset attrition and rotate his troops deployed in Ukraine," Bloomberg Economics Russia economist Alex Isakov said.
