Russians are growing fearful that President Vladimir Putin may soon order a massive new mobilization for the war in Ukraine after this weekend’s parliamentary elections.

That fear stretches to officials in the Kremlin and army recruitment centers, who’ve been looking to open foreign bank accounts and move assets abroad while encouraging friends and relatives to leave Russia in recent months, documents seen by Bloomberg News show.

While Putin denies he has any such plans, a European security official says Russia’s preparing to draft an additional 300,000 men into the army by the end of the year.

Unlike a previous mobilization in September 2022, which caused a spike in public anxiety and sent tens of thousands fleeing from Russia, there may be no formal announcement this time. That’s because the Kremlin has quietly built the digital infrastructure to summon people to the army while also closing off potential escape routes.

Three days of voting begin Friday in Russia’s first parliamentary elections since the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion. United Russia, which campaigns as the party of Putin, is expected to retain the majority in the State Duma that it has held since 2003 in the elections that are tightly controlled by the Kremlin.

Russia is incurring massive casualties for little progress on the battlefield in Ukraine, where Putin says he has about 700,000 troops deployed. The Kremlin needs to recruit about 400,000 people each year to replenish the army’s ranks and has relied mostly on offering huge recruitment bonuses and generous salaries to persuade people to sign military contracts. But with the war deep in its fifth year, there are signs the pool of volunteers is starting to dry up.

Russian regions recruited about 234,000 new contract troops between January and August, based on budget data, according to Janis Kluge, an analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. That compares to about 260,000 in the same period last year, he wrote on Substack.

Russia is restructuring military commissariats to deal with increased flows of draftees, the European official said, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive. Advertising campaigns in Russia are urging men to sign military contracts to avoid the prospect of forced conscription.

Putin has called warnings of a post-election mobilization “complete nonsense” and part of a western information campaign against Russia. “From the point of view of the availability of military personnel, we have no problems here,” he said in Vladivostok on Sept. 3. “People are coming forward voluntarily and signing contracts.”

About 1,000 Russian soldiers are being killed in Ukraine each week in addition to those wounded, according to a person in Moscow familiar with situation. Russia needs more frontline troops and the quality of existing recruits is extremely low, the person said, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Tuesday that 301,000 Russian troops had been killed and wounded so far this year, with monthly losses rising to 42,000 in July and August. It’s struggling with its own manpower challenges with about 1.5 million men on police wanted lists for evading conscription, and some 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers absent without leave.

Bloomberg News can’t independently verify the claims. Neither Russia nor Ukraine publishes official data on the numbers of their own troop casualties.

Putin continues to seek full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, where Russian forces are making grinding assaults to try to seize a fortress belt of cities they’ve failed to conquer in fighting since 2014. Ukraine rejects his demand to cede the territory as part of a deal to end the war.

Putin drew a direct connection between the election and the war in a televised address to the nation on Wednesday.

“Your choice and determination will show once again that millions of people are backing our fighters,” he said. “Participation in the elections is our joint contribution to Russia’s victory.”

Four other parties that are likely to gain seats in the parliamentary elections all support the war and there’s no genuine opposition. When the Yabloko party’s “for peace and freedom” campaign appeared popular enough to clear the 5% threshold for entry to the Duma, it was kicked off the ballot by Russia’s Supreme Court for supposed breaches of election rules.

“Since the key issues are being resolved on the battlefield, the State Duma won’t be that important,” said Yevgeny Minchenko, a Moscow-based political scientist who’s worked with the Kremlin. “All the parties adhere to the presidential consensus.”

The Kremlin’s likely to focus mobilization efforts in the regions showing the greatest support for Putin in the elections, according to Ekaterina Schulmann, a Berlin-based political scientist at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“In places where loyalty, discipline and administrative effectiveness were demonstrated, both by voters and by the authorities, more people could be recruited,” she said. “If they managed the elections well, they can also manage mobilization well in their region.”

European government officials say Putin has yet to make a final decision on mobilization. The negative public reaction to the call-up of 300,000 reservists in the 2022 draft remains etched in the memory of nervous Kremlin officials.

While that mobilization relied on serving paper notices to draftees, Russia’s digital Unified Military Register now automatically links with tax services, police databases, medical records, property registries, and border control.

Under updated regulations, an electronic summons is legally deemed to have been delivered seven days after it’s posted to the online portal regardless of whether the recipient opens it. An automatic exit ban takes effect at border posts as soon as the notice is published to prevent people leaving Russia.

For anyone failing to appear at a recruitment center within 20 days, automated penalties block access to public services including vehicle registration, real estate transactions, credit access, and self-employed business status.

Some officials worried that staffing reductions of up to 15% in Russia’s regions as part of budget cuts ordered by Putin earlier this year could result in those let go being called up to the front, the documents seen by Bloomberg indicate. There’s no sign the Kremlin currently has plans to do that, according to European government officials.

Still, rumors of an impending mobilization are stirring renewed anxiety, with reports of rising numbers of Russians crossing into neighboring countries such as Georgia and Armenia ahead of the elections. In August, Moscow accused Armenian officials of “provocative” statements after Yerevan indicated a readiness to welcome Russians fleeing military service.

Even as Putin insists his forces are advancing steadily in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Russia’s summer offensive yielded a gain of just 155 square kilometers (about 60 square miles) of territory from May to August, according to analysis by Alex Kokcharov, Bloomberg’s geoeconomic analyst for Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The analysis based on data compiled by DeepState, a Ukrainian open-source collective with links to the country’s military, compares to 2,037 square kilometers in the same period last year.

Russia’s army has sustained roughly 33,000 casualties on average per month so far this year for an average monthly gain of just 104 square kilometers, representing approximately 317 killed or wounded for every square kilometer taken, according to Kokcharov’s calculations.

“The military situation in recent months indicates that Russia does not have enough manpower both to concentrate forces on the main axis of advance and to reliably cover the front line,” said Kirill Rogov, head of Re: Russia, a Vienna-based research group. “In other words, mobilization would be necessary if the objective is to reach the borders of Donbas within six months.”

—With assistance from Alberto Nardelli, Ania Nussbaum and Thomas Hall.

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