Both states have spent the war solving the same problem by opposite means: Ukraine through mobilisation law and territorial formations, Russia through paid contract recruitment, prisoners, volunteer structures and imported manpower. Infantry availability, not equipment, is the binding constraint on both sides.
Summary
Ukraine declared general mobilisation and martial law on the first day of the invasion and has extended both continuously since, expanding Territorial Defence enormously in 2022 and repeatedly revising conscription age, exemption and enforcement rules under sustained domestic and partner pressure. Russia avoided a second formal mobilisation after the politically costly partial mobilisation of September 2022, relying instead on high-paying contract recruitment, prisoner recruitment through private and later ministry structures, regional volunteer formations, and from October 2024 on North Korean troops. Both approaches solve the same problem — replacing infantry losses in an attritional war — and both carry costs their governments treat as political rather than military. The competition between them is continuous and is the single best predictor of what either army can attempt.
Why it matters
Equipment can be supplied by partners; trained infantry cannot. This is why force generation, not weapons transfer, is the variable analysts watch when asking whether a line will hold. It is also the point at which the war reaches furthest into each society: conscription enforcement is Ukraine's most divisive domestic issue, and the avoidance of a second mobilisation wave is the clearest evidence of what the Russian leadership believes it can ask of its own population.
Stated objectives
What the participants say. Each entry cites where the position was stated; Vigil records that it was made, not that it is true.
Ukraine states that mobilisation is required for national defence and has repeatedly amended the legal framework governing registration, exemption and enforcement rather than changing the principle.
Russia states that recruitment is voluntary and contract-based, and has not declared a second mobilisation since September 2022.
Assessed objectives
Vigil's reading, graded. Kept structurally apart from stated positions so an assessment can never be published as someone's declared aim.
Russia's reliance on financial incentives rather than compulsion is a political choice about what the leadership believes it can ask, and it is expensive enough to constitute a real fiscal constraint.
Ukraine's manpower constraint is demographic and structural rather than a policy failure, and no available policy change resolves it — which is why the argument is about enforcement and fairness rather than about totals.
Primary forces
- Armed Forces of Ukraine Primary force · Confidence: High · as of 2026-06
- Territorial Defence Forces Primary force · Confidence: High · as of 2026-06
Territorial Defence expanded from a small framework into a large branch in 2022 and is the clearest institutional record of Ukrainian force expansion.
Opposing forces
- Armed Forces of Russia Opposing force · Confidence: High · as of 2026-06
- MoD volunteer formations Opposing force · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06
Ministry-run volunteer structures absorbed much of the recruitment previously conducted by private companies after 2023.
Supporting & external
- National Guard Supporting force · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06
National Guard recruitment, including through offensive-guard brigades, became a parallel channel to army mobilisation.
- BARS combat reserve formations Supporting force · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2026-06
Reported participants
- Wagner Group → Africa Corps Reported participant · Confidence: Moderate · as of 2023-08
Private structures conducted prisoner recruitment at scale until the 2023 mutiny and subsequent absorption of that function by state bodies.
Mass volunteering and territorial expansion
Ukraine's initial problem was absorbing volunteers rather than finding them, and Territorial Defence expanded enormously. Russia relied on its pre-war contract force until losses made that untenable.
Russia's partial mobilisation and its political cost
A partial mobilisation produced large-scale emigration and the war's most visible domestic dissent in Russia. It has not been repeated, and that non-repetition has governed Russian recruitment policy since.
Payment instead of compulsion
Russia scaled contract recruitment with sign-on bonuses at levels far above regional wages, absorbed prisoner recruitment into state structures after the Wagner mutiny, and avoided a second formal wave.
The manpower squeeze and imported troops
Ukraine lowered the mobilisation age and tightened enforcement under partner pressure amid public controversy; Russia added North Korean troops to a recruitment system that was covering but not exceeding losses.
Substituting production for people
The other half of force generation, and the half this campaign was missing. Where manpower could not be found, Ukraine has substituted machines, and the substitution is now large enough to be a structural feature rather than an expedient: uncrewed systems do a growing share of the reconnaissance, strike and interception work that would otherwise require people at the front. Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council put domestic FPV production capacity above eight million units a year across more than 160 companies, reported 100,000 interceptor drones produced during 2025 across more than twenty producers, and stated that over 70 per cent of weapons procurement spending in 2025 went to domestic manufacturers. Those are the state's own figures and are recorded as its position rather than as established output. Two distinctions do the analytical work here. First, capacity is not production: the headline figure Kyiv publishes for 2026 — a projected industrial capacity of some 55 billion dollars — describes what the sector could build if it were paid to, and Ukraine's constraint on this lane has repeatedly been money rather than factory floor. Second, substitution has limits: drones have not replaced the infantry needed to hold ground, which is precisely where the manpower problem described in the phases above still binds.
Outcome and present status
Unresolved, and the closest thing the war has to a decisive variable. Both systems have so far replaced losses well enough to prevent collapse and not well enough to enable operational breakthrough. Russia's method is fiscally expensive and politically cheap; Ukraine's is fiscally cheap and politically expensive. Whichever fails first is the most plausible route to a change in the war's character that does not come from outside it.
Observed adaptations
Russia converted prisoner recruitment from a private-company practice into a state function after the 2023 mutiny, removing the political risk while retaining the manpower stream.
Ukraine created recruitment pathways tied to specific brigades and roles rather than to general mobilisation, an attempt to make service predictable enough to attract volunteers.
Both sides shifted trained-manpower priority toward drone operators, a role that did not exist at scale in 2022 and now competes directly with infantry for the same people.
Political implications
Mobilisation enforcement is Ukraine's most divisive domestic issue, and the avoidance of a second wave is the clearest constraint on Russian decision-making.
Military implications
Sets the ceiling on what either army can attempt, independent of equipment availability.
Economic implications
Russian recruitment bonuses and Ukrainian military salaries are both large fiscal commitments competing with everything else in each budget.
Linked events
Locations
Places this module already publishes as map markers, listed because the campaign is about them. Not an operational area.
Reference layers
What remains unknown
- Neither state publishes reliable recruitment, casualty or current strength figures, and both treat the numbers as instruments. This module states none of them.
- North Korean troop numbers and their employment are assessed by several governments with a wide spread between estimates.
- Ukrainian mobilisation enforcement practice varies by region and is reported anecdotally rather than measured.
- Ukrainian defence-industrial figures are published by the Ukrainian state about its own sector, and mix capacity, procurement share and output in the same announcements. No independent audit of production volumes exists. Where this record carries such a figure it names the quantity the source actually measured, and does not convert a capacity into an output.
- The fiscal cost of Russian recruitment bonuses is partially visible in regional budgets and is not consolidated in any published federal series.
Readings the evidence also supports
- Russia's avoidance of a second mobilisation can be read as evidence that paid recruitment is sufficient, or as evidence that the leadership judges the political risk unacceptable even though the manpower is needed. The two imply very different fragility, and recruitment data is not published in a form that distinguishes them.
- Ukrainian mobilisation controversy can be read as a sign of approaching manpower exhaustion, or as the ordinary politics of conscription in a democracy at war, which was contentious from the beginning. Both readings have been advanced by Ukrainian officials.
Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.
Ukrainian conscription-age and exemption changes
Each change is a political cost paid for a manpower gain, which makes the changes themselves a measure of how tight the constraint has become.
Any second Russian formal mobilisation
Would be the most significant political signal of the war's second half, and its absence has been consistent enough to make it informative.
Russian recruitment bonus levels
Rising payments against flat recruitment indicate the pool is thinning — a better indicator than any announced total.
Foreign manpower beyond North Korea
A precedent has been set. Its extension to other suppliers would change the arithmetic again.
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Assessed as of2026-08Last reviewed2026-08-26