In the seemingly never-ending Russia-Ukraine War, Vladimir Putin’s losses just keep on piling up, in terms of ships, tanks, aircraft, and most significantly, personnel alike.
Yet instead of finally relenting and deciding that enough is enough after 4.5 years of bloodshed, the Russian Federation’s autocratic head of state presses on with his war of aggression, throwing more of his troops into the metaphorical meat grinder much like then-Soviet strongman Joseph Stalin did with the Red Army during World War II, or as even post-Cold War Russians still prefer to call it, “The Great Patriotic War (Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna).”
Putin in Early 2026 Russian Federation Photo
Putin June 2026 Kremlin Photo Handout.
Indeed, Putin apparently remains committed to consigning an additional half a million of his countrymen to the brutal Ukrainian frontlines.
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)
Our primary source of information is a July 29, 2026 article by Newsweek senior reporter Brendan Cole titled “How 500,000 New Russian Soldiers Could Shape Ukraine War.”
Therein, Mr. Cole notes that back in September 2022—when the Russo-Ukrainian War was a mere seven months old—Putin had announced a partial mobilization, albeit a plan “managed quietly to avoid panic.”
The author then cites an assertion by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that between 300,000 and 500,000 troops could be drafted following Russia’s parliamentary elections in September.
Granted, assuming these nightmarish numbers were to become a reality, that doesn’t necessarily mean that every single one of the prospective draftees would be sent to the front; according to Russian opposition news outlet Verstka, citing unnamed Moscow officials—in turn citing anonymous Moscow officials—some of the new soldiers would be used to enforce martial law imposed to prevent civil unrest and increasing restrictions on Russia’s civilian populace.
For his part, Former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev denied the veracity of the imminent mobilization rumors, stating that 200,000 volunteers had already signed contracts to serve in its armed forces in the first half of the year.
Digging Deeper: Experts Weigh In
–John Hardie, deputy director, Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD): “Further mobilization would help Russia prolong the war but probably wouldn’t fundamentally alter its outcome…If Putin does decide to mobilize again, it would mean he has recognized the war is on a losing trajectory but has opted to double down rather than moderate his demands…Putin has thus far avoided this option because it carries high costs and risks. It would trigger another mass exodus from the country and could spark domestic unrest against an increasingly unpopular war.”
– Yuriy Boyechko, CEO of Hope for Ukraine: “Sheer numbers allow Moscow to sustain a protracted war of attrition, absorb heavy front line losses, and fortify defensive positions against future counteroffensives.”
NOTE: The “mass exodus” that Mr. Hardie is referring to is the phenomenon of the queues of Russians crossing into Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia to flee the September 2022 that followed Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv.
Speaking of the “Great Patriotic War”…
As noted by Peter Suciu—a name that will be familiar to longtime readers of 19FortyFive—back in a January 11, 2026 article for Forbes titled “Ukraine War Has Gone On Longer Than The Soviet’s Fight In WWII,” “On January 11, 2026, the conflict reached its 1,418th day, the same number of days the Soviet Union’s Red Army fought against Nazi Germany during the ‘Great Patriotic War’ from June 22, 1941, until Victory Day in Europe on May 9, 1945.”
Crunching some additional numbers, 199 days have elapsed from that red-letter January 11 day to the day that these days are being typed, January 29, 2026, bringing the running tally of the Russia-Ukraine War to 1,617 days.
On the one hand, as horrific as the Russian death toll has been in the present conflict—an estimated 131,000 killed in action this year alone—that still pales in comparison to the mind-numbing **25 million** deaths suffered by the Soviet people during WWII.
The Ukraine War Keeps Getting Worse
By contrast, the Ukraine war is proving itself to be a bloody stalemate for Moscow at best, and quite possibly a looming outright defeat at worst.
What’s more, as worrisome as that 500,000-troop figure is, it also shows that Putin doesn’t have nearly as big a manpower pool to draw from as Stalin did; according to Kyle Hoekstra of HistoryHit, “the Red Army had reached a high of 12 million troops in 1945.”
A big reason for this, of course, is the fact that the Soviet Union had all those additional Soviet Republics had all of those additional Soviet republics besides Russia—including Ukraine, ironically enough—to recruit and conscript from; by contrast, with 35 years having elapsed since the Soviet empire’s collapse, Putin simply doesn’t have that luxury at his disposal.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (with a concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He is also the author of the book “Five Decades of a Fabulous Firearm: Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Beretta 92 Pistol Series,” the second edition of which was recently published.
