A familiar exodus is taking place on Russia’s southern border with Georgia.
More than 113,000 Russians left their country last week via the so-called Upper Lars checkpoint — a spike in movement that reflects growing fears that the Kremlin is poised to announce a new mobilization effort.
In recent months, Russian authorities have adopted increasingly aggressive recruitment measures, ramped up data collection on reservists, and expanded the National Guard’s remit, all fueling talk of another call.
Alexey Tabalov — founder of the human rights organization School of the Conscript, which works to protect conscripts and military personnel — said his NGO has noted a recent rise in requests for legal assistance from men of military age, “primarily from those in the military reserve.” And in early August, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s intelligence services expected Russia to launch a “rapid mobilization” of several hundred thousand men by the end of the year.
What’s more, Georgia has seen this type of border traffic before. In September 2022, when President Vladimir Putin launched a partial military mobilization that called up some 300,000 men following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Georgia was one of the main destinations for those looking to flee. As one of the few Eastern European border countries allowing visa-free entry to Russian citizens, it had received more than 100,000 Russians within a week. Georgian authorities did not reply to a request for comment by the time of publication.
But the Kremlin has denied the mobilization rumor for months. Speaking to reporters last week, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya said: “We do not need mass mobilization at the moment; it is neither planned nor expected, as far as I know.” Meanwhile, government spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week that any talk of a mobilization was “being planted by the Ukrainian authorities.”
People who crossed the Verkhni Lars customs checkpoint between Georgia and Russia walk in the road in Zemo Larsi, Georgia, on Sept. 28, 2022, the day after Putin announced a partial mobilisation of Russian army reservists with 300,000 men to be called up. | Daro Sulakauri/Getty ImagesHowever, shifting battlefield realities are hard to ignore: Though Russia does not release official casualty numbers, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Moscow’s losses have exceeded the number of volunteers willing to join the army for the first time. And while Russia has largely succeeded in using generous payouts to recruit volunteers and prisoners to fight in the war, “it is becoming increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to recruit new people,” said a lawyer with Russian Peace Plea, an organization helping men evade military service, who was granted anonymity over security concerns.
The “social contract” between the Kremlin and the Russian people, they said, is “visibly crumbling.”
Preparatory steps
Russia’s military reserve consists mainly of men under the age of 55 who have completed their compulsory military service. A year-long military service is obligatory for every Russian male aged 18 to 30, with some exceptions made for health concerns and continuing education.
“These people are typically among those most likely to be called up in the event of a mobilization,” said Tabalov. In 2022, then-Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu estimated their number at around 25 million.
According to Tabalov, in recent months the Russian government has been actively collecting reservists’ personal data through their employers. “They even inquire about the addresses of their relatives,” he said, as such information could be used to try and track down anyone who might hide during an active mobilization. These men are then called to military enlistment offices and given assignments specifying which unit they would report to if a mobilization was declared.
“Since spring, the government’s interest in reservists has risen sharply,” confirmed the Peace Plea lawyer.
Tabalov sees this as laying the foundation for a faster, more discreet call-up. “You simply bring around, say, 10 buses to a particular metallurgical plant and pick up a pre-agreed number of workers right from their workplaces, calling them by name: Petrov, Ivanov, Sidorov — please get on the bus, which then goes to the military base,” he explained.
A series of laws passed in recent months also points to possible preparations.
In March, the Kremlin made electronic military summonses mandatory for the conscription process. The 2022 mobilization had relied on paper summonses, which generally took effect only after the recipient had signed them. It created a bureaucratic loophole that led to up to 1 million Russians quickly leaving the country in anticipation of a summons being delivered and a subsequent travel ban.
Introduced in 2023 and rolled out nationwide on a non-mandatory basis in 2025, the digital summonses now in operation take effect as soon as they are issued online, immediately notifying border services and banning the recipient from leaving the country. “Authorities have learned a lesson from the previous mobilization,” said Tabalov.
Then, in July, Russian media reported that the National Guard — a security body created by Putin in 2016 to primarily protect the regime against threats and protests from within the country and the occupied territories — was taking steps to prepare its military personnel, staff and facilities in case of potential mobilization via training and evacuations.
To that end, National Guard Director Vladimir Zolotov signed a decree specifically stating the body should additionally guard “from dangers arising during the mobilization period, during the period of martial law and in wartime.”
Reservists drafted during the partial mobilisation attend a departure ceremony in Sevastopol, Crimea, on Sept. 27, 2022. | Stringer/AFP via Getty ImagesThese changes indicate the government is preparing for a tougher, more “repressive” type of mobilization that would bring in the security agencies, said Ukrainian military expert Oleksandr Kovalenko.
Delaying the inevitable
Even with all signs pointing to the increased likelihood of a new mobilization, Putin appears determined to avoid it. An official mobilization “would mean things are going badly at the front, that Putin is a poor commander-in-chief,” said Tabalov. And the Kremlin has tried several aggressive recruitment strategies to sidestep it.
In March 2026, Russian media reported the defense ministry planned to recruit some 80,000 people, mostly students, into its newly created “Unmanned Systems Forces.” The initiative was accompanied by a mass propaganda campaign and pressure on universities. School administrations routinely ordered students to attend mass meetings with military recruiters, where they were pushed to sign contracts in exchange for payouts. In August, Novaya Gazeta Europe calculated that almost all of Russia’s top 50 universities had been pressuring their students to join the “drone troops.” But by July, only 8,000 people had been recruited — roughly 10 percent of the target.
This attempt to address the recruitment shortage by targeting students was doomed to fail, according to Tabalov. “Historically, male students enter universities to avoid the army, not to join it,” he said. Investigative organization Conflict Intelligence Team also reported the failure of the “student drone troops” program in July, which it attributed to declining interest in joining the army and the general “unwillingness of students to sign a contract with the army despite active campaigning and pressure.”
Another strategy emerged later in June after videos of mass raids in Penza flooded social media, one of the poorest cities in European Russia. They showed police and military officers, sometimes accompanied by men in balaclavas, appearing to stop civilian men at checkpoints, on the street and on public transport, loading them into minibusses and taking them to military enlistment offices where some were then forced to sign contracts to fight in the war.
Penza authorities have repeatedly denied any involvement in the alleged abductions and forced recruitment.
The Penza campaign is alleged to be part of a broader government effort to push regions to recruit more men and meet quotas without officially declaring mobilization. According to news reports, Russia’s defense ministry has set an official target of recruiting 409,000 contract soldiers by the end of 2026.
But “this initiative could backfire on authorities,” said Tabalov again. “Citizens in Penza have already begun to self-organize — forming self-defense squads — and that, frankly, amounts to a challenge to state power.”
In August, Penza blogger Stanislav Morozov created a group that garnered around 1,500 members, assisting men facing detention and coercion. “We are doing this out of desperation. Because we simply have no other choice left. We are people standing up for our fundamental rights and freedoms — the right not to be turned into a commodity or stripped of our will under the threat of a baton,” he wrote. Bashmakovo residents also reportedly formed a self-defense squad to patrol the area, filming “recruiters,” recording their license plates and trying to identify those concealing their identities.
Regardless of the recruitment shortfall, no official announcement regarding a possible mobilization is expected before September, when Russia will hold its parliamentary elections. Though no anti-war parties have been allowed to enter the race, both Putin himself and his ruling United Russia party are facing declining support, and an official military call-up would not help the Russian leader’s political standing.
And yet, a mobilization is becoming increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to avoid. “I think destroying Ukraine is [Putin’s] obsession, and this fixed idea requires manpower,” said Tabalov. “The only resource left — given the failure of other attempts — is mobilization.”
The Kremlin, the Russian Defense Ministry and the National Guard of Russia did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment by the time of publication.