Putin preparing to send more Russians to war’: Zelenskyy claims losses now exceed recruitment

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing a fresh wave of military mobilisation as Russia’s battlefield losses begin to outpace the number of new recruits joining the armed forces.In his nightly address on Friday, Zelenskyy said Russia had recruited around 221,000 personnel into its military so far in 2026 but had suffered nearly 225,500 casualties, including 131,000 killed and almost 93,000 wounded, this year alone.“Putin is preparing to simply send more Russians to war. He disguises it with different words and signals, but that is what he is preparing to do,” Zelenskyy said.The Ukrainian president reiterated a warning he made a day earlier, claiming Kyiv’s intelligence indicated that Russia was planning a “new and quite significant” mobilisation campaign in the autumn.“We have clear intelligence that Russia is preparing a new and quite significant wave of mobilization for the fall. Currently, the Russians are losing more troops on the front than they are recruiting,” Zelenskyy said on July 24.Recruitment falls short of targetsAccording to Ukrainian officials, Moscow has struggled to meet its recruitment goals despite continuing heavy fighting along the front line.While Russia’s recruitment figures cannot be independently verified, Ukrainian intelligence previously claimed that about 70,500 Russians signed military contracts during the first three months of 2026, around 30,000 short of the Russian defence ministry’s target.For comparison, Russia signed around 90,000 contracts during the same period in 2025, according to Janis Kluge, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).Zelenskyy also alleged that Moscow is preparing to deploy an additional 30,000 North Korean troops to support Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.Casualty figures remain disputedThe true scale of Russian military losses since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 remains one of the war’s most contested issues.Russia has rarely published casualty figures, while Ukraine regularly releases significantly higher estimates that cannot be independently verified.One of the most widely cited independent assessments comes from a joint investigation by Russian independent media outlet Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service. Instead of relying on official government claims, the project verifies each reported death using open-source evidence, including obituaries, funeral notices, cemetery records, court documents, local government announcements and social media posts.Only soldiers whose deaths can be confirmed through multiple independent sources are included in the database.As of July 17, the investigation had identified more than 230,000 Russian military personnel killed by name, including over 7,400 officers. The investigators have repeatedly stressed that this represents only the minimum confirmed death toll, as many battlefield deaths are never publicly reported.Ukraine, meanwhile, has disclosed relatively few official updates on its own military casualties, citing national security concerns. Most estimates of Ukrainian losses have therefore come from Western intelligence agencies and independent analysts.