EXPLAINER: Putin denies any mobilization, then signs his fourth army expansion in seven months

15,500 men to find

The decree of September 28

Vladimir Putin signed a decree on September 28 that sets the authorized strength of Russia’s armed forces at 2,441,630 positions, including 1,550,500 service members.

That is 15,500 more service members than the decree of July 27, Interfax reports. The text took effect the same day.

The decree counts in units. That is its word. A unit of strength is a line in a table.

The whole text fits in a few lines. One total. One military figure. One budget instruction. One effective date.

The government has to find the money. The decree orders it to provide the funding for the Defense Ministry, Interfax notes.

One line, one man

A line does not march. A line does not sleep in a trench. A line does not sign a contract.

Someone has to fill it.

Fifteen thousand five hundred lines means fifteen thousand five hundred men to find. Sons. Husbands. The neighbor across the landing.

A draft notice is paper first. It is held in both hands. Read again. Folded in four.

And facing them, the Ukrainians these men will be sent to fight.

A line in a table, and someone to fill it.

“Complete nonsense” on September 1

An information attack

Twenty-seven days earlier, on Tuesday, September 1, Putin answered the mobilization rumors. “It’s complete nonsense,” he told reporters, according to The Moscow Times.

He called it “an information attack on Russia.” The Kremlin, the paper recalls, casts these rumors as a disinformation campaign run from abroad.

The rumors kept coming back because the invasion has stalled in its fifth year, The Moscow Times writes. A mobilization would cost a great deal politically. Hence the question.

At the Eastern Economic Forum, he added that no scenario required a mobilization today, according to Lenta.ru.

Today.

The word matters. Meduza caught it on September 10: Putin ruled the scenario out only for the present day. Nebenzia, Russia’s envoy to the UN, said the same thing another way. No mobilization at this moment.

On the 28th, a signature

“Nonsense” on the 1st. A decree on the 28th.

A strength decree is not a mobilization. I know. I will get there.

But the calendar speaks. On the 1st, a denial. On the 28th, a signature. Twenty-seven days between the two.

A denial is spoken in front of reporters. A decree is posted on an official portal. One fades. The other stays.

The denial commits a voice. The decree commits a budget, a ministry and, at the end of the chain, men.

Twenty-seven days from denial to signature.

Four decrees in seven months

March, June, July, September

The September 28 decree does not stand alone. It is the fourth of the year, Meduza notes.

A decree in force since December 1, 2024, was the starting point: 2,389,130 positions, including 1,500,000 service members, according to the Russian presidency’s website.

A decree in March raises the total to 2,391,770 positions, including 1,502,640 service members.

A decree in June raises it to 2,399,130, according to RTVI.

A decree in July raises it to 2,426,130, including 1,535,000 service members.

A decree in September, finally: 2,441,630.

Together, these four decrees add 52,500 positions, including 50,500 for service members, according to Meduza.

Do the subtraction. March: 2,640 more positions. June: 7,360. July: 27,000, of which 25,000 military. September: 15,500, all of them military.

Three times in four years

In the first four years of the full-scale invasion, Putin had raised authorized strength only three times, Meduza recalls.

Three times in four years. Four times in seven months.

I stand with those who will pay for these lines: the Ukrainians across from them, and the men who will be enlisted to fill them. I oppose the September 28 decree and the denial that came before it. Because a president who talks of “nonsense” on September 1 signs, on the 28th, the fourth expansion of the year.

My opponent is not the Russian people. It is a signature at the bottom of a decree.

The pace has changed. The vocabulary has not.

A ceiling made of paper

The 1996 rule

Decrees of this kind rest on Article 4 of the federal law on defense of May 31, 1996. The September 2024 decree cited it in full, on the Russian presidency’s website.

The president sets a number. The government provides the money. The Defense Ministry fills the positions.

Put plainly, authorized strength is a ceiling. Not a call-up.

Each decree replaces the one before. The September 2024 decree repealed the one of December 1, 2023. The table keeps only its latest version.

Every new post is military

In the September 28 decree, the entire increase goes to service members. Civilian positions stay at 891,130, RTVI notes.

Not one more civilian post. Only soldiers.

You will sometimes read “2.44 million soldiers.” That is wrong. The total also counts civilian positions. Service members number 1,550,500.

The July decree also set a ceiling for the ministry’s central apparatus: 13,400 positions, including 4,930 civilian officials, according to Interfax.

The offices in Moscow keep their size. The units get the lines.

Since December 2024, 50,500 more service members on paper.

Ceiling raised, posts to fill.

No reason written down

July had a reason

The July decree came with an explanation. It went with the creation of military construction units, according to Interfax and Fontanka.

The September decree gives none. The reason for the increase is not stated, Fontanka notes.

It does not say why. It does not say who. It does not say when.

It says only who pays the bill. The government will have to fund the new positions, Fontanka points out.

What the silence leaves open

A decree with no stated reason leaves everything open. Contract soldiers. Reservists. New units. The text closes no door.

In other words, the document that counts the positions does not say who will fill them.

Who will fill these 15,500 lines?

That same Monday, Zelensky urged the governments of countries where Moscow recruits for its army to act against that recruitment, according to Reuters.

Fifteen thousand five hundred men to find, and the day the volunteers are no longer enough…

Silent on its reason, precise on its number.

One million, thirteen thousand

The 2017 decree

Before the war, a 2017 decree set military strength at 1,013,628 positions, out of a total of 1,902,758, CentralAsia recalls.

Today, 1,550,500 service members. More than half as many again.

The total followed. From 1,902,758 positions before the war to 2,441,630 today. The table has gained more than half a million lines.

This is the seventh expansion since the war began, by the count of RTVI and CentralAsia.

The seventh since the invasion. The fourth this year. The first since the September parliamentary elections.

The same reporting puts the military budget planned for 2027 at 17.1 trillion rubles, or 35% of the total budget.

Half again as large

An army that grows like this, in the middle of an invasion, is not growing for parades.

Each decree raises the ceiling. The front empties the lines. They have to be filled, then filled again.

One million. One and a half million. The table keeps getting longer.

This is not a peacetime army being enlarged. It is a wartime army being topped back up.

Half again as large as before the war.

More than 8,000 North Koreans

What Ukrainian intelligence says

The same evening, in his address, Zelensky asserts that Russia has already begun an additional mobilization, citing Ukrainian military intelligence, as reported by the Kyiv Independent. Moscow is reportedly raising its number of recruits by various methods.

Moscow is also reportedly trying to raise the share of foreigners in its army, he says.

He asserts that more than 8,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia. Some 10,000 more are reportedly being selected for training and deployment, according to NK News.

In exchange, he says, Moscow is helping Pyongyang produce attack drones. This is how evil spreads from one part of the world to another, Zelensky says.

Claims from a country at war

These are claims from a country at war. I report them as such.

Ukrainian intelligence also says the Russian General Staff would be ready to mobilize some 300,000 men in 2026, then as many again in 2027, according to the Kyiv Independent.

Just to make up for its losses, Russia would have to recruit about 400,000 people a year, a senior Ukrainian official told the same outlet.

Zelensky is calling for new sanctions and more help from allies.

The Kremlin denies any mobilization.

Kyiv asserts without a public document. Moscow denies with a decree under its arm.

Kyiv asserts, Moscow denies, the decree speaks.

A ceiling, not a call-up

Contracts, quotas and cost

The argument deserves its strongest form.

Authorized strength is not a call-up. Authorized strength forces no one to leave. Fifteen thousand five hundred positions is about 1% of military strength.

Russia already recruits under contract. According to Meduza, the 2026 quota is 409,000 professional soldiers, and recruitment runs at around 30,000 people a month.

Mobilization is also expensive. According to the same outlet, calling up 300,000 men would cost more than a trillion rubles a year in bonuses, pay and benefits.

The argument carries weight. No new mobilization has been declared since the one in 2022. The ranks fill through contracts, bonuses and recruiting.

Why mobilize, the Kremlin would argue, when volunteers are signing?

The pace, the word, the precedent

Here is what turns it around. The pace, first: four increases in seven months, against three in four years.

Then the word. Putin ruled out mobilization only for the present day. A dated denial is a denial that expires.

And the precedent. In September 2022, Putin decreed a “partial” mobilization of 300,000 reservists. It had been denied a few days before it was announced, The Moscow Times recalls.

A ceiling raised four times in seven months is no longer a limit. It is a slope.

Four increases make a staircase, not a ceiling.

Thirty to fifty thousand

Kyiv’s numbers keep moving

Kyiv’s numbers now deserve the same scrutiny.

In July and August, Zelensky spoke of 30,000 to 50,000 possible North Korean soldiers, according to NK News. He now speaks of more than 8,000 present and 10,000 being selected.

Ukrainian intelligence announced, according to The Moscow Times, a plan to mobilize 600,000 men over 2026 and 2027. The September 28 decree adds 15,500 positions.

And Zelensky has already irritated Seoul by disclosing details about North Korean prisoners from the UN podium, the Kyiv Independent recalls.

The gap of a country at war

The gap is enormous. It is the gap of a country at war, one that needs its allies to take the threat seriously.

An honest reader holds both ideas at once. The threat is real. Kyiv has an interest in inflating it.

True. And it changes nothing about this: the decree is not an estimate. It is signed, published, in force.

We can doubt Kyiv. We cannot doubt a text posted on the official portal of Russian legal acts.

And yet it is Kyiv we suspect first, and the decree we forget.

The estimates move. The signature stays.

September 2022

The denial that came first

In September 2022, two days before the “partial” mobilization was announced, the chair of the Duma’s defense committee, Andrei Kartapolov, assured Russians they had nothing to fear from a general mobilization, Meduza recalls.

The general mobilization never came. The “partial” one did.

The call-up set off a mass exodus of draft-age men, The Moscow Times writes.

Two days. One denial. Then lines at the borders.

The laws that followed

Since then, according to The Moscow Times, the rules have changed. A digital draft registry, with automatic travel bans. Draft notices all year round. Reservists who can be deployed to guard “critical infrastructure” without a formal mobilization.

A registry. A travel ban. A notice that arrives in any season.

The real question lies elsewhere.

Mobilization might no longer need to be announced. The laws, the registry and the decrees would do the word’s work.

No one can claim that a strength decree is preparing a new call-up. We can say that the last call-up began with a denial.

In 2022, the denial came days before the call-up.

241,600 dates of death

Mediazona’s list

There is another list besides the decrees.

Mediazona, with the BBC’s Russian service, records the Russian military dead in Ukraine name by name. As of the September 21 update, the date of death is known in 241,600 cases.

According to the Kyiv Independent, which cites the count, the total of identified dead has reached 258,989. More than 10,000 names were added in under two weeks.

Among them, 7,692 officers. And about 20,500 mobilized men, a figure Mediazona warns is “a significant underestimate.” The list, it adds, is not exhaustive.

The method combines public sources with an estimate of excess male mortality, drawn from the national probate registry, Mediazona explains.

Lines that empty

Two hundred forty-one thousand six hundred dates.

A name read aloud takes two seconds. This list, read straight through, would take days.

Each one was a line in a table of strength. Each one was a man.

These men came to invade. Their deaths do not erase the invasion. They show what one man’s signature costs, even at home.

How many of these dates will fall on a line created on September 28?

The decree adds lines. The war empties them.

Read the decree, not the denial

What our capitals listen for

Here at home, we wait for a word. Mobilization. Until it is spoken, the alarm stays low.

I admit I watched for that word all summer myself. I read the denials. I read the rumors. I read the estimates. I did not read the decrees.

And yet the decrees were public. March. June. July. September. On the Russian presidency’s website, with their numbers.

The calendar of signatures

And yet the Kremlin never hid its tables. It hid only the word.

On September 21, according to the Kyiv Independent, Putin’s party, United Russia, won the parliamentary elections, which observers called rigged. Seven days later, the decree.

Experts expected a mobilization after those elections, the Kyiv Independent recalls.

Decrees make no noise. They do not make the evening news. You barely hear the click of a scrolling page. They pile up.

One election. One week. One signature.

Signatures piling up, the word never spoken.

Mobilization without the word

What the decree puts in place

The September 28 decree mobilizes no one. It does something better. It makes room.

Fifteen thousand five hundred more lines. Fifty-two thousand five hundred since March. No stated reason. A denial dated September 1.

The word mobilization is a political threshold. The decree is an administrative one. Moscow crosses the second without saying the first.

The word may come. Or it may never come, and the lines will fill anyway.

And yet, in Kyiv as here at home, we wait for the announcement.

The word we are waiting for

Will we wait for the word “mobilization” before counting the positions a decree has already created?

The Kremlin is already counting.

A line in a table. A man to find. A Ukrainian across the line.

“Nonsense” on the 1st, a fourth signature on the 28th.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Interfax — text of the decree, 2,441,630 positions including 1,550,500 military, September 28, 2026
• President of Russia — decree setting strength at 2,391,770 positions, March 4, 2026
• Mediazona — Russian military dead identified by name, update of September 21, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Meduza — fourth expansion this year, 52,500 positions since March, September 28, 2026
• The Moscow Times — Putin calls mobilization rumors “complete nonsense,” September 2, 2026
• NK News — Zelensky warns of 10,000 more North Korean troops, September 29, 2026