Putin Preparing Mass Mobilization? WSJ Reports on Russian Drills Near Polish Border

The Wall Street Journal reports that Russian officers have overseen mobilization drills in Kaliningrad, as Western intelligence warns manpower shortages may force Vladimir Putin into a massive new conscription wave.

Russian Officers Oversee Mobilization Drills in Kaliningrad

“Wall Street Journal” established that in July, Russian army officers flew from St. Petersburg to the Kaliningrad Oblast—a Russian exclave situated between two NATO states (including Poland) and the Baltic Sea—to supervise exercises concerning mobilization procedures, which include the accommodation, feeding, and arming of new recruits. Western intelligence officials cited by the newspaper state that similar drills are currently underway in many regions of Russia.

Concerns Over Kaliningrad and the Suwałki Gap

According to American and European officials cited by the daily, Moscow has for months been unable to secure a sufficient number of new troops to compensate for losses on the front. Ukrainian drones reportedly shortened the average survival time of a Russian soldier on the front line to just a few minutes, days, or weeks. These personnel problems could force Vladimir Putin to announce a new draft wave on a scale unseen in years. His determination to capture the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, despite minor and costly progress, may compel him to act.

The Kaliningrad Oblast, where one of the exercises was conducted, has long been a source of particular concern for the West. Intelligence officials warned that in the event of an escalation of conflict with the West, Russia could attempt to seize part of the so-called Suwałki Gap—a narrow strip of land connecting Kaliningrad with Belarus, running through the territory of Poland and Lithuania.

The article’s authors recall that Kaliningrad, captured by the Soviet Union from Germany in 1945, long served as Russia’s only ice-free port on the Baltic and was repeatedly used by Moscow to demonstrate force against NATO. Allies responded in kind; last week, air exercises involving American and Norwegian fighters and Polish land forces took place near the Russian exclave. As described by Maciek Kucharczyk in Gazeta.pl, the formation of NATO aircraft that appeared over northern Poland was an exceptionally eloquent signal to the Russians and looked like the opening of a strong attack on the Königsberg oblast.

Fear of New Mobilization Across Russia

“WSJ” recalls that the last mobilization announced by Putin in September 2022, intended to stabilize the then-wobbly front, caused chaos across the country, with hundreds of thousands of men leaving Russia, leading to a sharp rise in air ticket prices and multi-hour queues at border crossings with countries such as Georgia and Kazakhstan.

According to the daily, rumors of an impending new mobilization are already causing nervousness among Russians, who are searching the internet for ways to quickly leave the country in the event of such a scenario. The Russian customs service reportedly reported last week that the Upper Lars border crossing on the border with Georgia set a record of over 20,000 crossings in a single day, though the Georgian interior ministry questioned these data. Real estate agents in Georgia and Armenia also reportedly noted an increase in apartment prices, tied to expectations of another wave of Russian emigrants.