Russia’s ability to sustain its war in Ukraine is increasingly constrained not by weapons, but by manpower. As battlefield losses mount and recruitment falters, the Kremlin is widening the net, legally, administratively and socially, to keep personnel flowing without triggering another politically risky mass mobilization. That strategy was dissected on TVP World’s Eastern Express by Rasmus Nilsson, a lecturer in Slavic and East European studies at University College London, who described Moscow’s predicament as “a bit of both,” an attrition and a recruitment crisis rolled into one. “Well, it’s an attrition issue first and foremost,” Nilsson said, noting that Russia’s limited territorial gains have come “with huge losses of manpower.” Over time, he added, this inevitably morphs into a recruitment problem, forcing authorities to “spread recruitment wider and wider within society,” creating new pockets of discontent. Nilsson argued that the Kremlin has deliberately shielded major urban centers from the heaviest burden of mobilization, skewing recruitment toward rural regions and ethnic republics. “If you are an ethnic Russian living in the provinces, you are still much more likely to be called up than if you live in one of the bigger cities, notably St. Petersburg and Moscow,” he said, while warning that this imbalance may narrow if the war drags on. Much of the current speculation has focused on military training assemblies for reservists, officially framed as routine exercises. Nilsson sees them differently. “It shows a lot of different ways in which the regime is trying to get its population more and more involved in militarily significant actions,” he said, even when those roles stop short of frontline combat. The objective, Nilsson argued, is not efficiency but control. “What matters here is not the result; it’s the process, getting people into the system.” Once individuals are assigned to guard infrastructure such as oil refineries, the state knows where they are and can redeploy them if needed. That logic, he said, also extends to Russia’s reliance on foreign mercenaries and convicts. Nilsson described a “colonial fallacy” underpinning their treatment, warning that abuse and expendability are increasingly deterring recruits abroad while creating long-term security risks at home. “It’s self-defeating,” he said. “You train people in violence, let them survive and then release them back into society. That can only damage cohesion in the years to come.”
