On the military front, Putin is running out of human drone fodder. He has deployed more troops than the entire British Army in a nine-month battle to capture the small town of Kostiantynivka in the Donbas, so far without clear success.
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies estimates that Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties. It is losing 30,000 to 35,000 a month in the kill zone. This, too, drains the budget. The family payout per death is £90,000. A lost leg costs £28,000.
A rush of recruits signed up last year to lock in the enlistment bonus – betting on easy barracks duty – when Donald Trump seemed eager to betray Ukraine.
The online investigative journal Verstka, run by diaspora journalists with clandestine sources inside Russia, says recruitment since then has plummeted. “It’s as if we’ve run out of people. There are no more fools for money,” said one soldier, claiming units in his regiment were below 40pc strength.
Another told Verstka that the 2026 intake is “unfit to fight” and often press-ganged. “Some are taken from prison, others from the streets, literally homeless, already so old and ill that they can barely stand.” They are put through three days of “training” and sent straight into the kill zone.
The mood is mutinous. “It’s already hatred, but not yet rage, and that’s where it’s all heading. Honestly, I’m scared for the country,” he said.
Putin faces the choice of military failure or rolling the dice on a general mobilisation, which would be politically explosive. Verstka reports that the army is already preparing camps to train tens of thousands at a time.
“Everybody knows it’s a meatgrinder. If Putin goes for mobilisation, there could be half a million people protesting on the streets,” said Prof Riley. “You could see a situation like 1917, when Russian troops refused to go to the front.”