Ukraine Crisis Media Center
Aug 30, 2026
⚠️ Russia preparing to mobilize another 600,000 troops in 2026 and 2027, Ukraine’s intelligence says
🪖 Russia is preparing to mobilize another 600,000 troops in 2026 and 2027, drafting 300,000 troops each year,
according to a report by the Main Intelligence Department of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Foreign
Intelligence Service released by the Office of the President on Thursday. The newly recruited soldiers will staff
the units that are fighting against Ukraine as well as new ones.
📋 “Ukraine has information that the Russian General Staff has already prepared a scenario for the additional
mobilization of 600,000 people within the specified time frames this year and next. First and foremost, they
plan to bring up to full strength the formations and military units fighting against Ukrainians, as well as units of
the Russian armed forces that are currently being formed,” the report reads.
📉 Ukraine’s intelligence agencies said Russia is considering a fresh mobilization push as a response to its
mounting losses and slowing contract recruitment.
💀 Russia lost around 240,000 troops between January and July 2026, including at least 140,000 killed in action. It
recruited 232,000 contract soldiers throughout the same period of time.
⚖️ Russia is amending legislation, tightening military registration and expanding a draft of those serving prison
terms as part of a new draft wave. Those convicted for smuggling of weapons, poisonous, radioactive, and
explosive substances, banditry and participation in criminal groups as well as for facilitating illegal migration
will be allowed to serve in the army.
👩✈️ There is also a consensus to mobilize convicted women or recruit them for contract service. Recruit training will
last between 15 and 60 days, with some of the drills taking place in Belarus, the intelligence agencies said.
📊 Internal Russian documents argue that a new mobilization wave is necessary as disapproval of the war in the
regions rises, reaching 69 per cent, and the number of those eager to sign a contract declines.
🚫 Russia has a system of electronic mobilization orders ready and is preparing to further expand coercive
measures, including a ban to travel abroad, get bank loans and make operations with property as well as
driver’s license cancellation and money freeze.
🗳️ Russian leader Vladimir Putin will most likely order a fresh mobilization wave after the Russian Duma elections
between September 18 and 20, the intelligence agencies said.
Weekly roundup.
Ukraine resists Russia’s invasion.
Days 1,643-1,647
International audience outreach
28.08.2026
This week, Russia has escalated drone and missile attacks on Ukraine.
On Monday, August 24, Ukraine marked the 35th anniversary of its independence. It held a parade of unmanned aerial and ground systems and sea drones on Monday. It is the first such showcase since the invasion. A meeting of the Coalition of the Willing took place in Kyiv on Monday. The leaders who attended the gathering announced new aid packages to Ukraine, with air defenses being a top priority.
Russian aerial attacks continue to kill civilians, including children. Russia dropped nine aerial bombs on Kramatorsk, in Donetsk region on Tuesday, injuring 24 people, including a two-month-old baby girl. A Russian drone strike on Chernihiv on Wednesday killed a 49-year-old woman and her four-year-old daughter. Her older, 14-year-old daughter was injured. Russia dropped a glide bomb on the Kherson combined heat and power plant, causing serious damage to the facility, Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz said on Wednesday. It dropped another four glide bombs on the plant overnight, destroying all remaining heat and power generating equipment, the company said on Thursday. Local authorities urged the residents to evacuate ahead of a possibly difficult winter with no power and heat. Russia is preparing to escalate ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, Bloomberg News said Wednesday.
Ukraine continues to carry out painful strikes deep into Russia that aim to disrupt the country’s war economy. The Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in Russia’s Rostov region halted operations after an overnight aerial attack, the region’s governor said Tuesday. The Ukrainian military struck a number of Russian military targets on Monday and overnight on Tuesday, damaging a MiG-29 jet fighter at the Millerovo air base in Russia, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Tuesday. Ukraine also struck Russia’s primary and alternate command posts near occupied Donetsk on Wednesday and overnight on Thursday, the General Staff said.
A surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, to Moscow is seen as one of this week’s key events. Ratcliffe traveled to the Russian capital to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit, The Wall Street Journal said Wednesday. Russia is preparing to mobilize another 600,000 troops in 2026 and 2027, Ukraine’s intelligence said in a report released on Thursday. Kyiv experiences 13 air raid alerts in one day as more than 100 jet-powered drones target the capital.
Russia launched around 140 attack drones at Ukraine throughout the day on Thursday, Ukraine’s Air Force said. Most of the drones were jet-powered.
“Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. on August 27, [Russia] attacked Ukraine with around 140 drones, of which more than 100 were jet-powered. The enemy launched most of the drones toward the Ukrainian capital,” the Air Force said, adding that “as of 7 p.m. [Thursday], more than 10 jet-powered attack drones are in the skies [over Ukraine].”
According to the military’s preliminary reports, Ukraine’s air defenses shot down or otherwise neutralized around 120 of 140 Russian attack drones.
https://uacrisis.org/en/1643-1647
🎯 Russia preparing to escalate ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, according to Bloomberg News
⚠️ Russia is preparing to escalate attacks on Ukraine after concluding that negotiations for a peace deal have
reached a dead end, according to three people close to the Kremlin, Bloomberg News said Wednesday. The
paragraphs below are quoted from the article.
🚀 For now, Russia is weighing an intensification of powerful conventional ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv,
including the center of the capital, and infrastructure targets in other Ukrainian cities, the people said, asking
not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.
🕊️ Negotiation frameworks have effectively collapsed, leaving the two warring sides back at square one, the
people said. Putin won’t end the war under economic pressure from sanctions and Ukrainian attacks on
Russian refineries and logistics networks, they said.
🌍 Moscow increasingly views the Ukrainian strikes as attacks by NATO states because alliance members supply
Kyiv with weapons and intelligence, the people said. The current phase of hostilities isn’t the peak of military
escalation, they said.
💥 President Vladimir Putin signaled his intentions in weekend comments to a state TV reporter, as he shrugged
off the impact of the attacks on Russia’s economy. Ukraine “opened this Pandora’s box,” he said. “Well, be
ready to get a blowback on your most sensitive sectors of the economy.”
🇺🇸 US efforts to end the war have failed to produce a breakthrough and negotiations have stalled with President
Donald Trump focused on the conflict with Iran.
🤝 US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were expected to travel to Moscow after an eight-month break and
to visit Kyiv for the first time, but no date has emerged for either trip.
☢️ The escalating spiral of strikes is leading a growing number of Russian officials to the conclusion that Putin
could eventually opt to use tactical nuclear weapons as a last resort in Ukraine, according to the people close
to the Kremlin.
📈 The volume of chatter in Moscow from hawks advocating such a step has increased recently.
🛑 To be sure, there’s no sign yet that Russia is preparing to fire nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
☢️ Putin has also repeatedly indulged in nuclear saber-rattling over the years to try to intimidate Ukraine’s
western allies into reducing support for its defense.
🌏 Key Russian partners including China and India have warned Putin strongly against using them.
💬 “As long as Moscow has room to escalate with conventional weapons, including by intensifying missile strikes,
it has little incentive to cross the nuclear threshold,” [Alexander Gabuev, Berlin-based director of the Carnegie
Russia Eurasia Center] said.
Timofey Milovanov :
During interrogations, the Russians beat Pavlo with clubs to rip out his kidneys. One sat on his back, the other broke his ribs, arms, and legs with blows. Then they beat him with stun grenades and spun a live phone wire.
Before that, Pavlo had been out of Mariupol for 18 days. He had traveled about 200 kilometers and was captured a few kilometers from Ukrainian positions.
Near Gulaypole, his group came across a Russian ring. They were armed with automatic rifles. Pavlo said, “There were two options — to turn around and run into the field where they would shoot, or to lie face down in the ground.”
This is how he ended up in captivity, Suspilne Vinnytsia.
On February 24, Pavlo was met in Kremenivka near Mariupol. His division entered the Illitch factory and held there until the breakthrough. When the Russian aviation destroyed the hangars, most of the food was left under the rubble. They collected water from the rain, heated snow, and searched for food in the factory.
The factory was surrounded. There was almost nothing left to fight with: automatic rifles and grenades against planes, “Grad” missiles, and drones.
The division decided to make a breakthrough. No one wanted to surrender. Pavlo was already wounded. Everyone was put in the “Ural” (Ukrainian “Ural” is a derogatory term for a military unit). They hit the “Grad” missiles, aviation, machine guns, and grenade launchers with the car.
The “Ural” was destroyed. Those who could, jumped out and ran. Pavlo ran to the bushes when, three meters from him, another shot came from a grenade launcher.
Then they crossed the river. On the other bank, they saw Russian “Tigers”. Those who didn’t manage to cross over heard: “Go back”. Those who refused, the Russians shot them right in the water.
Then Pavlo joined a group of eight people: seven boys and one girl. They sat in old dugouts in the forest, hid in the smoke, passed through villages, asked for food from locals and bypassed Russian positions.
In 18 days, they covered about 200 kilometers. Then there was the Russian ring near Gulyaipole, automatic rifles and captivity.
At first, they were taken to a school for interrogations. The Russians didn’t believe they were from Mariupol: “You’ve gone too far”. Pavlo: “Well, that’s how it is. We made it”.
Then there was Sevastopol. Then the pre-trial detention center in Voronezh.
From the car, they were thrown to the ground and the “interrogation” began: stun grenades, batons, Kyiv residents, blows to the head, hands, feet and organs. In Voronezh, this lasted about eight hours.
Pavlo: “Not everyone survives the interrogation. There are cases when people die right at the interrogation”.
In four years, Pavlo went through Sevastopol, Voronezh, Kursk, back to Sevastopol, a colony in the Rostov region and a pre-trial detention center in Izhevsk. Before the war, he weighed 100-105 kg. After captivity – 68.
Pavlo: “There are no people there. Even those who try to appear good, still bend to the system and abuse. They torture, they kill. When you abuse and kill unarmed people who no longer pose a threat to you, it’s a completely different story”.
He didn’t believe until the very end. He was sitting with a man who had been “exchanged” three or four times and was being returned.
Pavlo only believed when he got on a Ukrainian bus and heard: “Glory to Ukraine!”
Even in Voronezh, in the second month of captivity, Pavlo told the guys in the cell: if he returned, he would kiss the Ukrainian land. So Pavlo did it.
Radoslaw Sikorski:
For decades, the West has tried to not belittle Russia and make it a responsible partner. They invited it to the G7, signed the NATO-Russia Basic Act, and made a deal with the EU.
Every US administration has tried to negotiate with Moscow. Poland too. We all tried. Russia refused everyone.
Sikorski to The Economist:
Russia is again trying to get its way through escalation. Recently, it threatened Britain with “consequences” for military aid to Ukraine. Retcliffe probably came to Moscow to warn the Kremlin not to attack a NATO country.
The fear of Russia’s collapse is exaggerated. Regions depend on Moscow. A serious crisis will launch an elite fight for power in the center faster.
Russia has long used escalation as a tool. The Soviet army called this “combat intelligence”: attacking, watching the reaction, and looking for weak points.
Today, the Kremlin is also testing NATO with drones, cyberattacks, sabotage, GPS obstacles, and information operations. Russia expects democracies to be afraid to hit its weak spots.
So Europe doesn’t need to rush into negotiations. If Europe starts a dialogue to strategically weaken Russia, the Kremlin may become stronger, intensify hybrid attacks, undermine Ukraine’s support, and further split Europe.
Europe must take a greater risk now to avoid a much greater danger later. We need to convince Putin that escalation will give him nothing.
Russia considers us an enemy and wants to destroy our democratic civilization. There is no need to rush to pacify it.