But ever since Wagner posed a threat to the Russian Ministry of Defense, they realized that they needed to formalize some control and integrate the irregular formations into its contract service. So now the volunteers are signing contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as private military companies. They all signed military contract service with the Russian Ministry of Defense. And that in turn adds up the numbers of contract service men that Russia quote unquote has, even though it's the same amount of forces that had previously operated on the battlefield. They're just now technically under the Russian Armed Forces. It seems like the Kremlin continues to commit to the crypto-pomolization campaign, which in emphasize today, for example, the number of contract service men that Russia has in response to a question on the necessity for another wave of mobilization. We do have an assessment that Putin worries about the prospects of another mobilization, and it's a complex question for him because presidential elections are coming up in 2024. Previous mobilization wave has been pretty not popular for a lot of Russians. It's something that triggered protests and general dissatisfaction in the information space and the societal concern. And now we're approaching the fall conscription season, which is supposedly going to happen on October 1. And that rises again questions about mobilization because the processes for conscription are very similar to the Russian mobilization. You get a conscription notice or a draft notice that they look pretty similar. So that also raises some tensions, I guess, in Russian society as we embark on another conscription wave.

Staying on that theme, one often hears people talk about the potentiality for Russia to be able to bring hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions soldiers to bear as things really get bad. That seems a very major oversimplification of the reality of mobilizing forces. Can you just talk us through what is Russia's capability in terms of mobilization? I mean, how many forces has it brought to bear realistically? And can it bring to bear? Because it seems to me that so much of this talk is just thinking in terms of having men on the ground. And that's not the way you fight a war, is it? It's about the other things that you bring into play as well.

Yeah, I think that Russian officials in the past have claimed that their reserves are around like 25 million people. Any men that have served a conscription cycle or even went to a school that had some sort of a military education class technically counts as a reservist. But it doesn't mean that they're actually trained. And I believe some of the previous research conducted by other organizations indicated that like less than 5% of reservists go through training that is necessary to maintain that kind of reserve training, combat effectiveness and so on. So all in all, Russia still has issues with training. They are capable of training around that conscription cycle. Worth of people. So that's around 150,000, maybe a little bit more when counting Belarus into the factor, which they've used in the past to train mobilized personnel. So their training capacity is still constrained. They have deployed a lot of their combat effective officers to fight in the war. So there's no trainers on the ground. They have to use Belarusian trainers. So going above that number already puts a significant strain on the training, but also bureaucratic issues, equipment issues. We had seen that last year where a portion of mobilized personnel just went to the front lines with no training to reinforce positions. They were not effective. A lot of them were killed. They suffered significant losses. And Russia does not have capacity to bring up that reserve and maintain that reserve. So while they have it on paper, they still need to make significant improvements to their reserve system as well as their contract service system. It's a whole big mess. That is not to say that they're not trying to make improvements. They have been trying to make their conscription notice delivery systems more effective. Now it's harder to deflect from say a draft notice or a conscription notice because they have now made it on your phone or you can get a call and someone will tell you that you've been conscripted, for example, that had not existed in the past. You actually had to give someone a notice to their hand for it to count as if that they have now have the legal responsibility to go to a military recruitment center and so on. So they are trying to improve it. And there's definitely some improvements that are a lot more radical that some factions are trying to promote. So for example, some officials are trying to make mobilization or conscription deferrals less possible. So for example, if you're a student in college and you technically defer from conscription, there are some policymakers that want to make it even harder to do so. So they're trying to improve their bureaucratic system, but this is not going to happen in just one year, especially during wartime.

Kasha, thank you for your time. Lovely

to me. Thank you

so much. Ukraine

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