PDB Afternoon Bulletin | August 24th, 2026: New Evidence Putin Is Preparing for Mass Mobilization & U.S. Cancels Major South Korean Exercise

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**Mike Baker** (0:39)
It's Monday, the 24th of August. Welcome to the PDB Afternoon Bulletin. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, new evidence suggests that Vladimir Putin is quietly preparing Russia for another mass mobilization in an effort to keep his Ukraine invasion supplied with soldiers. Later in the show, the Iran War forces the US to cancel a major amphibious exercise with South Korea, raising new concerns about America's military readiness in Asia. But first, our PDB Afternoon Spotlight.
We've been watching for indicators that Vladimir Putin may be preparing Russia for another mass mobilization. Until now, the evidence was largely circumstantial. Major battlefield losses, increasingly aggressive recruitment tactics, and repeated warnings from Ukrainian intelligence. But now there's something more concrete. New reporting indicates that Russia's military is actively testing whether it could handle another large scale influx of soldiers. According to the Wall Street Journal, Russian officers traveled from St. Petersburg to Kaliningrad last month to oversee a mobilization readiness exercise. Now Kaliningrad is the Russian territory positioned between Poland and Lithuania along the Baltic Sea.
The officers reportedly reviewed how local authorities would receive newly mobilized residents, where those recruits would be housed, how they would be fed, and how the military would provide them with weapons and equipment. And Western intelligence officials say Kaliningrad was not an isolated case. Similar exercises are reportedly being conducted across Russia, testing whether the country's military infrastructure could handle a sudden influx of new recruits. At the same time, the Journal reports that the Kremlin has not made a final decision yet, but military organizations generally don't conduct nationwide readiness exercises for options that they consider impossible. Russia appears to be making certain that the machinery is ready if Putin decides to go that route.
And the reasoning is clear. Russia is running through soldiers almost as quickly as it can recruit them. Western estimates cited by The Guardian suggest Russia is suffering more than 30,000 casualties every month. Moscow is reportedly recruiting roughly 1,000 new soldiers per day, or approximately 30,000 per month, so you can see the problem. In other words, almost Russia's entire recruitment pipeline may be going toward replacing its losses.
That does allow Moscow to sustain the war, but it does not necessarily provide the additional forces that Putin would need to break through Ukraine's defenses and capture the remainder of the Donbass. The Kremlin has spent years attempting to avoid another public mobilization by offering enormous signing bonuses and military salaries that in many cases can equal several years of wages in Russia's poorer regions. But finding volunteers is becoming increasingly difficult. Regional governments have reportedly been given recruitment targets by Moscow. Some are paying private recruiters and even ordinary citizens for every man they persuade to enlist. Russian authorities have also widened the pool of potential recruits to include additional prisoners, students and men facing financial or legal trouble.
More troubling are reports of increasingly coercive tactics. Russian activists say men have been detained on the street, removed from their workplaces or summoned to police stations before being pressured into signing military contracts. Some reportedly faced threats, blackmail or physical violence.
As one Russian activist described it, the recruitment campaign has become a hunt for people.
Now, that's where the new mobilization exercises become significant. Putin has been attempting to generate mobilization level manpower without formally announcing another mobilization. If that system can no longer produce enough soldiers, the Kremlin may be preparing its alternative. Ukrainian President Zelensky says Kiev's intelligence services believe that Russia could call up another 300,000 men after the parliamentary elections that are scheduled in Russia for September 18th through the 20th. Zelensky described the potential campaign as a quote, peripheral mobilization, meaning that the Kremlin would concentrate the call up in Russia's poorer and more remote regions while attempting to shield residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Now, that specific figure has not been independently confirmed, but the timing would make political sense.
When Putin mobilized 300,000 reservists in September of 2022, the announcement caused panic, protests, and a mass exodus of military-age Russian men. Another call up before parliamentary elections could remind voters that the war Putin promised would remain distant may soon reach directly into their homes.
Waiting until after the elections would obviously reduce that immediate political risk. Again, there's no evidence that Putin has signed a mobilization order. Russian officials continue to deny that another mass call-up is planned, and Western intelligence reportedly hasn't concluded yet that a final decision has been made. But the reality for Putin is he's running out of options for throwing sufficient bodies into his war machine. He may not want to stage another mass mobilization, but if he insists on continuing his war, or the special military operation, as he likes to call it, he may not have any choice.