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Tick, Tock: Ukraine Puts Putin on an Election Clock
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. We’re six weeks out from the first parliamentary elections in Russia since tanks trundled across the Ukrainian border, and Vladimir Putin is facing a dilemma.
His party, United Russia, is hardly in danger of losing. Unlike the hundreds of representatives across America sweating profusely ahead of the midterms, the Russian president’s decades-long cultivation of authoritarian rule means his party members don’t have to campaign too hard.
But even a quasi-dictator presiding over a stage-managed vote has to be careful, because Ukraine ’s military campaign has scored some significant victories as of late.
Kyiv ’s effective campaign of long-range strikes on oil refineries, energy infrastructure and the warehouses of Russia’s largest e-commerce company, Wildberries , has squeezed revenues and triggered nasty fuel shortages at home. The front line may be holding steady, but Ukraine’s armed forces are ripping through Russian soldiers at an alarming rate.
Most of the options available to Putin to address these challenges would be wildly unpopular and a risky prospect this close to State Duma elections. But the longer he attempts to shield Russian society from the bite of war, the stronger Kyiv’s position grows.
In September 2022, six months into a “special military operation” in Ukraine that Moscow expected to last a matter of days or weeks, the Russian Defense Ministry announced it was calling up some 300,000 reservists in a sweeping mobilization.
Public response was clear. In the week following the announcement, 66,000 Russian citizens fled the country and entered the European Union, according to data collected by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency—a 30 percent increase on the previous week. Many more headed south into Kazakhstan and Georgia.
Today, Russian battlefield losses are severe, but nobody knows quite how severe. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces claimed the Russian army's losses outstripped the number of fresh recruits from December to April, while Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said roughly 200,000 people signed Defense Ministry contracts in the first half of 2026, comfortably meeting manpower requirements.
Either way, months of costly fighting have produced no decisive strategic breakthrough. This has led to widespread rumors that another major mobilization is in the offing, four years on from the first.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told British broadcaster Sky News that Moscow would call up between 300,000-500,000 soldiers later this year , and many Russian military bloggers have concluded that mobilization is the only way to make headway in Ukraine.
The speculation drove some of Russia’s leading media personalities and politicians, including veteran state-broadcaster Vladimir Solovyov and Chairman of the State Duma’s Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov, to assure the public last month that there is “no need for mobilization.” Solovyov later said Russian military bloggers spreading such rumors should be prosecuted.
In the meantime, Russian authorities are taking a carrot, rather than a stick, approach to try and boost recruitment figures.
On July 22, the State Duma removed another 11 criminal offenses from the list of crimes that prevent defendants and convicts from signing military contracts. Among the crimes struck off the list were drug smuggling, people smuggling and gang assault.
Regional authorities are also raising the ceiling of one-off bonus payments for those willing to join the military, while the Moscow Times revealed the Defense Ministry had launched recruitment drives at Russian universities.
An autocrat hell-bent on eking out a resounding display of national unity at countrywide elections cannot risk creating border queues of military-age men weeks before polling day with a hasty military mobilization.
Last month, Russian media estimated that 10 percent of Wildberries’ warehouse space had gone up in flames, while a renewed estimate published earlier this week by Russian independent outlet Vyorstka said more than a quarter of total logistics space had been damaged, leading to a dramatic drop-off in order deliveries to collection points in Moscow.
Such strikes impact Russian consumers by causing price hikes, order cancellations and making popular products unavailable, and also kill off small- and medium-sized businesses reliant on Wildberries to ship their products, experts told Newsweek .
But it is Ukraine’s incessant destruction of Russian oil and gas refineries and energy infrastructure that causes Putin the biggest headache.
Since June, most Russian regions have struggled with well-documented fuel shortages ; motorists have faced hourslong queues, gasoline and diesel rationing, and of course, high prices at the pump.
This is because gasoline production in Russia was down roughly one-third in June and July versus the same time last year, according to an analysis of trading data by the New Eurasian Strategies Center (NEST), meaning the country is now consuming more gasoline than it can produce.
NEST Senior Research Fellow Sergey Aleksashenko warned that domestic gasoline stocks would be near empty by the autumn if the decline continues unabated. Putin will hope he means after the elections.
The damage is also showing up in export figures; the Kyiv School of Economics’ oil tracker found that Russian oil-product exports fell to a record low of 1.6 million barrels per day in June.
These factors have ground Russia’s economic growth almost to a halt. The Central Bank cut its 2026 GDP forecast to between zero and one percent last month, and raised its inflation forecast to between six and seven percent.
To keep the money coming in, the government ushered in blanket tax reforms at the turn of the year. Alongside an across-the-board value-added ta...
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