James Clark Reynolds – Daily Mail Sept 23, 2025

Vladimir Putin may be building a strategic reserve of new military recruits in preparation for direct conflict with the NATO military alliance, analysts have warned.

A Russian insider source said that around 292,000 people signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defence between the start of 2025 and September 15, an average of 7,900 per week, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

The source, who has ‘consistently provided accurate reports about changes in the Russian military command’, said that some of those recruits were part of a strategic reserve of forces that Russia has been building since early July 2025. They did not specify how many.

The ISW assessed that falling Russian casualties through the summer may have allowed the Russian military command to pursue the creation of a significant reserve force.

It added that the reports ‘indicate that the Kremlin is not interested in ending its war against Ukraine but remains committed to achieving its war goals on the battlefield and may be preparing for a conflict with [NATO]’.

‘The reported creation of a strategic reserve as part of wider Kremlin preparations for a possible Russia-NATO conflict in the future, particularly as Russia intensifies its youth military-patriotic programmes that aim to recruit Russian youth into the military in the years to come.’

Despite making public overtures to peace, and pledging on Monday to adhere to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) for one year following its expiration next February, Russian activity on the border with Europe has raised tensions in recent days.

British home secretary Yvette Cooper announced on Monday that British jets were ready to ‘confront’ Russian planes violating NATO airspace after a string of reported incursions over the last two weeks.

Estonia claimed that three Russian fighter jets had violated its airspace on Friday, after Poland and Romania accused Russia of drone incursions. Russia denied deliberately targeting objects in Polish territory.

The incursions also came against the backdrop of Russia’s joint Zapad drills with Belarus on the frontier with NATO. Foreign observers were invited to the drills, which appeared to be a fraction of the size of the last, in 2021.

But analysts nonetheless pointed to the precedent of Russia using the drills to build up forces ahead of the invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2022.

Natia Seskuria, international security expert and Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told the Daily Mail: ‘We know that Russia has used these drills to sort of test different war game scenarios. In 2008 against Georgia and then against Ukraine, Zapad drills preceded the actual military operations, the wars that Russia has launched against these countries.’

‘The scale is much more reduced. But it’s also an opportunity for Russia to basically test different scenarios and also to demonstrate to the West that they are still committed to their plans, which include, of course, primarily winning the war in Ukraine.’

Both the Zapad drills, which would have been planned years in advance, and the drone incursions are ‘a way for Putin to communicate that it’s not just Ukraine they are interested in, and Russia’s plans may go beyond Ukraine’.

Russia’s forces have taken huge losses after three-and-a-half years of conflict in Ukraine. In June, the British Ministry of Defence estimated that Russia had sustained one million casualties since the start of the war, including dead and wounded.

Ukrainian intelligence estimates that Russia’s population could decline by 25 per cent within the next 50 years, primarily due to war.

But Putin said last week that there were still ‘over 700,000 people’ currently on the Russian frontlines.

Russia is currently navigating a gruelling war of attrition as it intensifies its campaign to seize the Donetsk region, in Ukraine’s east. Russia now controls about 70 per cent of the region, with Ukrainian forces pushed back to a string of four cities dubbed its ‘fortress belt’, where they’ve repelled Russian advances for years.

But shortages of troops, supplies and chaotic management are making it increasingly hard to resist Russia’s relentless pressure in the region.

Analysts and Ukrainian officers say that Russia is unlikely to engage in protracted urban battles and will avoid costly fights like the storming of Bakhmut, which dragged on for months with staggering losses on both sides.

‘After Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar, the Russians clearly understood that large cities turn into vast cemeteries for their army, where they lose thousands upon thousands,’ said Col. Pavlo Yurchuk, whose troops are defending a small city at the northern end of the fortress belt.

To skirt the cities, Russian forces are pushing on the flanks and increasingly using infiltration tactics, sending small groups of soldiers through gaps between Ukrainian units.

Some of these groups have achieved tactical gains, slipping behind the front line to hide in tree lines or basements, occasionally occupying abandoned positions or cutting off supply routes. But the human cost is heavy: of a five-man unit, Ukrainian commanders estimate, two are usually killed, one is wounded, one goes missing, and only one survives to call for a drone to drop water or medicine.

‘These are tactical successes, not strategic ones,’ Yurchuk said. ‘This tactic is very slow and does not solve the tasks of encirclement or control of large settlements.’

Drones and glide bombs are also playing a crucial role, allowing Russia to hit troops and supplies headed for the front and to weaken Ukraine’s strongholds without head-on fighting.

This summer, Russian forces stepped up attacks at the northern and southern ends of the Donetsk belt. Their strategy, Ukrainian officers say, is to sever supply lines and surround the region’s cities rather than storming them directly.

The region – one of four that Russia illegally annexed in 2022, though it did not control any of them – became the epicentre of the fighting since the start of the full-scale invasion.

In northern Donestk, Yurchuk’s 63rd Brigade is fighting to hold the town of Lyman, a key logistics hub on the way to Sloviansk.

With a prewar population of 20,000, Lyman has rail connections, dozens of basements and bomb shelters, solid infrastructure and strong buildings where command posts or supply depots could be set up. It was occupied during part of the first year of the full-scale invasion but liberated in Ukraine’s autumn 2022 lightning counteroffensive.

If Russian forces manage to take Lyman, Yurchuk said, they could use it to build up troops and attempt to cross the Siverskyi Donets River, a natural obstacle that helps protect Sloviansk.

But the commander says he’s confident Russia’s latest offensive won’t work.

‘From a military point of view it looks correct – on the map it looks neat – but after nearly three and a half years of war we all know that such deep maneuvers and wide flanking operations are not Russia’s forte,’ said Yurchuk. ‘They simply won’t be able to control and supply those penetrations, so I’m sure that they will fail.’

While Russia achieves tactical gains without sparing sentiment for human life, Ukraine faces the grinding reality of troop shortages.

Exhaustion and a lack of regular rotations could also weaken Ukraine’s defenses.

‘People are obviously one of the key problems,’ said Taras Chmut, director of the Come Back Alive Foundation, which has raised more than $388 million over the past decade to equip Ukraine’s forces. ‘Not only the quantity, but their dispersion on the battlefield, the inefficiency of command, and the shortcomings in training and management.’

On paper, he said, some brigades list thousands of soldiers but can only field hundreds in combat, a gap he attributed not to Russian superiority but to mismanagement. He said the chaos means too many soldiers are sometimes doubled up on the same tasks and targets while others are left uncovered.

‘It’s a systemic flaw we can neither admit nor fix,’ he said. ‘Until we do, we have to make up for it with technology, with manpower, with the enemy’s weaknesses on the battlefield, and with the courage of people and volunteers who step in where they can.’

But he and others warned that these measures are temporary stopgaps unless broader changes come.

‘The overall trend, measured over years, looks unfavorable for Ukraine,’ Chmut said, adding that unless changes are made in the rear – such as fixing management failures in the army – and no new technology or geopolitical shift emerges, the outlook will remain grim. ‘The longer this drags on, the worse it will get – and without fresh resources the Russians will simply outmatch us in quantity and means.’

‘Just because the Russians moved slowly in the past doesn’t mean they won’t accelerate,’ warned Nick Reynolds, a research fellow in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute. ‘Sadly, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been under enormous pressure for a very long time.’

The fall of the fortress belt, he cautioned, would displace thousands of civilians and cause further economic damage. And even after capturing the whole region, the invasion is unlikely to end.

‘I see absolutely no reason, no indication why the Russian Federation or the Russian Armed Forces would stop’ with the Donetsk region Reynolds said.

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