2022 Russian mobilization

On 21 September 2022, Russia declared that it was initiating a “partial mobilization” of military reservists to bolster the country’s war effort against Ukraine. The announcement came after the Russian government’s decision to conduct “annexation referendums” throughout occupied Ukraine—on behalf of the entirety of four Ukrainian regions that it only controlled in part: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. The mobilization is widely believed to have been introduced to address the Russian military’s heavy casualties and lack of manpower, particularly in the face of major Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv.