Tripwire

The Russian Cabinet of Ministers’ Commission on Legislative Activity, on October 13, approved a Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) draft amendment to permit the Russian military to use Russian reservists from Russia’s “human mobilization reserve” (see definition below) in expeditionary deployments outside of Russia without an official Kremlin declaration of mobilization or a state of war.[1] Russian State Duma Defense Committee Chairperson Andrei Kartapolov stated on October 13 that the law will allow the Kremlin to deploy reservists outside of Russian territory, including to Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv oblasts.[2] The draft amendment will also allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to mobilize reservists to perform special tasks in armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations. The draft amendment marks a significant inflection in Russian law, which currently forbids the use of reservists in the absence of official mobilization or a formal declaration of war. The draft amendment also creates a new category of force assemblies called “special assemblies,” during which mobilized reservists would train for no more than two months before being deployed abroad.

Understanding Russia’s dual reserve system

Russia has two types of reserves. Russia retains a higher-readiness “human mobilization reserve,” an active reserve, in which Russian citizens sign a contract with the Russian MoD on a voluntary basis to serve in the reserve while remaining civilians except when called up.[3] Russia’s federal law “On Military Duty and Military Service” currently entitles such reservists to financial compensation for being reservists, but legally binds reservists to appear for mandatory drills and report to military enlistment centers in the event of mobilization.[4] Russian officials claim that there are two million members of the active reserve as of October 2025.[5]

Russia also retains an inactive reserve (also known as the human mobilization resource or “zapas” in Russian), which includes Russian men with a military registration age as old as 65-70 (in certain circumstances) who are not actively affiliated with the Russian Armed Forces.[6] The new regulation approved on October 13 only concerns members of Russia’s active reserve, not Russia’s larger ”zapas.”

Pattern

Russia’s main method for generating manpower through high financial incentives and price surging is reportedly losing momentum and hitting diminishing returns as of October 2025.[7] Russian military recruitment offices are failing to increase recruitment rates despite increasing payments – a tactic that had previously raised recruitment rates in 2023 and 2024.[8] The Kremlin’s current method of generating volunteers was already facing financial challenges as of early 2025.[9] The Russian MoD reportedly recruited almost 90,000 personnel during the first three months of 2025 by spending more than the total federal recruitment budget for 2025, for example.[10] ISW forecasted that Putin’s mismanagement of Russia’s war economy and unsustainable force generation system would likely present difficult decision points to Putin in 2026 or 2027.[11]

Russia has reportedly been forming a “strategic reserve” from new recruits since July 2025, likely because Russian manpower losses decreased in the summer of 2025.[12] A Russian insider source that has consistently provided accurate reports about changes in the Russian military command stated on September 21 that roughly 292,000 people signed contracts with the Russian MoD and that some of these recruits are joining the strategic reserve.[13] The new draft amendment adopted on October 13 may provide the legal mechanize to activate elements of this reserve.

Assessment

The Kremlin will likely formally amend restrictions on the use of Russia’s active reserve and will conduct rolling partial mobilization without formally declaring war on Ukraine or formally announcing that it is conducting a partial involuntary call up. Russian State Duma Defense Committee Deputy Chairman Alexei Zhuravlyov signaled that the amendment will allow the Kremlin to call up the reserve in “far more cases than before,” implying that the Kremlin will more actively tap into the Russian active reserve as the new recruitment pool, possibly to supplant the flagging legacy system based on individual payments.[14] The Kremlin will likely misrepresent the mobilized reservists as members of the professional reserve who volunteered to fight in Ukraine to prevent Russian society from opposing increased deployments of mobilized reservists.[15] In reality, the Kremlin will pull these reservists from established pools of reserve forces, whom the Russian state will compel to fight in Ukraine.

The Kremlin will likely use the amendment to involuntarily call up personnel in Russian irregular formations whom Moscow has been treating as an active reserve. The Kremlin has labeled personnel in irregular formations such as Cossacks and private military companies (PMCs) “volunteers” who are supporting the Russian Armed Forces within separate “volunteer formations” in an effort to maintain deniability about any future compulsory military service.[16] Kartapolov specifically denied that the amendment will allow the Kremlin to mobilize PMC elements, in fact, claiming that the amendment only concerns individuals who voluntarily signed military service contracts with the Russian MoD.[17] The Kremlin, however, has been forcing elements of irregular formations to sign military service contracts with the Russian MoD since July 2023, which likely makes them eligible for compulsory call ups under Russian law.[18]

The Kremlin will likely use the amendment to centralize control over the Russian Combat Army Reserve (BARS) units, which have been largely functioning as irregular formations and often under the supervision of Russian businessmen and officials.[19] Russian State Duma Defense Committee member Lieutenant General Viktor Sobolev claimed that the proposed amendment is aimed at “streamlining” the Russian Armed Forces personnel system and structure.[20] Sobolev noted that the amendment will ensure that various units will report to Putin, Chief of the Russian General Staff Army General Valery Gerasimov, and Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, and observed that there are numerous BARS units in Ukraine with varied organizational structures. The Kremlin first created the active reserve in 2015, which later transformed into BARS in late 2021.[21] The Kremlin delegated control over BARS units to various trusted officials throughout the full-scale invasion, creating a disorganized chain of command and failing to properly integrate the BARS system into the Russian Armed Forces.[22]

The Kremlin remains unlikely to declare general mobilization of the inactive reserve (“zapas”) due to concerns over the impacts on regime stability, the Russian economy, and the administrative capacity of Russia’s military bureaucracy.[23] Russian officials, including Gerasimov, continued to message to the Russian people that the Kremlin will not conduct “large-scale” mobilization and will continue to rely on recruits who signed military service contracts with the Russian MoD.[24] The Kremlin’s rhetorical emphasis on the ”voluntary“ nature of the active reserve and hesitance to officially declare war against Ukraine suggests that the Kremlin continues to seek to avoid overtly asking the Russian people for greater sacrifices.

Implications

The amendment will likely allow the Kremlin to deploy active reservists into combat more rapidly than was possible under the previous mechanism that required a formal declaration of war or mobilization order. The proposed amendment creates “special assemblies” as a third category of military gatherings alongside reservist training and inspection assemblies. The amendment states that such assemblies would be limited to a maximum of two months and are at Putin’s discretion.[25] The Kremlin may decide to shorten or remove the requirement for pre-deployment reservist military drills, given the vagueness of the “special assemblies” clause in the amendment. Zhuravlyov notably recently announced that Russian reservists can receive military ranks without undergoing prior military drills, which are normally necessary to confirm the reservists’ eligibility for military ranks, a change that ISW assessed was part of the Kremlin’s effort to alleviate strains on the Russian training system to facilitate more rapid deployments of replacements to Ukraine.[26] The Kremlin faced significant backlash in September 2022 after failing to provide the legally mandated training to mobilized reservists, and may be trying to avoid similar societal backlash by simply eliminating or significantly curtailing the legal requirement for mandatory training.[27]

Compulsory rolling mobilization of reservists may enable Russia to generate forces more cheaply. Russia’s current method of generating volunteers through high payments has significantly increased Russian government spending, eroded Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, introduced externalities to the Russian domestic labor market, and exacerbated Russian inflation over the last three years.[28] Russia may be able to more sustainably generate forces if Russia uses coercion and legal mechanisms to press reservists into fighting without paying them exorbitant financial compensation that distorts the Russian economy as badly.

Compulsory rolling call ups of reservists may enable the Kremlin to “demobilize” servicemen mobilized in 2022 to appease segments of Russian society and assert that Russian forces in Ukraine are fighting on a fully voluntary basis. Putin and Kremlin officials have repeatedly misrepresented Russian forces fighting in Ukraine as fully professional and volunteer-based since February 2022.[29] The Kremlin is likely trying to eliminate the class of mobilized servicemen whom Putin compulsorily called up in September 2022 to maintain this narrative. The Kremlin and the Russian military command had been conducting surveys about demobilization, coercing mobilized servicemen into signing military service contracts, and forming all “professional” military units by committing mobilized servicemen to assault operations throughout 2025.[30] The Kremlin likely aims to eliminate the involuntarily mobilized class to appease families of mobilized servicemen who have been appealing to the Kremlin for over three years and to alleviate the need to pay mobilized servicemen directly from the Russian Presidential Fund on time.[31]

Compulsory rolling mobilization of reservists may pose greater political risks to the Kremlin, however. The Kremlin will likely invest significant resources in convincing the Russian people that reservists who deploy to Ukraine did so voluntarily. Compulsory military service remains unattractive and controversial, and Putin may face greater domestic political risks if the Kremlin fails to convince the Russian people that mobilized reservists killed in Ukraine went to Ukraine “voluntarily.”

Indicators

Any Russian national information campaign that seeks to socialize the idea of activating reservists, even under the rubric of “special assemblies,” will likely indicate that the Kremlin is preparing to mobilize reservists. Anomalous activity at Russian training grounds would indicate preparations to stand up new training pipelines for reservists. Intensified recruitment campaigns into irregular formations such as BARS, Cossack organizations, PMCs, and other irregular formations may indicate the Kremlin’s efforts to expand the active reserve via informal ways. Russian federal subjects’ disinvestment from or sunsetting of heavy financial incentives for volunteer recruitment would indicate the Kremlin is shifting its recruitment strategy. Any sudden shift in Kremlin narratives towards supporting the need for general mobilization would indicate Russia’s attempt to mobilize the inactive reserve (“zapas”), though such an event remains less likely than the mobilization of other established groups in the active reserve.

This amendment does not likely presage a large-scale involuntary reserve call up similar to the one that brought hundreds of thousands of Russians into the military in 2022. Putin already has the legal mechanisms he needs for a large-scale one-time involuntary mobilization on any scale, and no change would be needed for a call up to expand the Russian military dramatically at this time. The legal adjustments described above facilitate much smaller rolling callups that could sustain Russian manpower at current levels on a continuing basis at lower financial cost. This warning does not, therefore, imply that Putin is preparing to expand the size of the Russian military dramatically or rapidly.