One of the recurring critiques of Western support for Ukraine is always that it’s too little, too late. Setting aside how fair or sensible this is, the striking thing is the degree to which there is a comparable strand of argument in Russia. There 'turbo-patriots' and similar nationalists argue for mass mobilisation, putting the economy on a war footing and generally adopting the policies of total war. Yet this is no more feasible than the critique of Western support.

It is certainly the case that there has been a creeping 'North Koreanisation' of Russia, with Western attempts to isolate the country embraced by hawks from Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev down as an excuse to further their own autarkic fantasies. From the virtual expropriation of companies such as Danone, and Carlsberg trying to negotiate their way out of the Russian market, to the crackdown on critics from the right as well as the left, they are pushing a new line that presents the 'Great Patriotic Military Operation' as an existential struggle for the Motherland's autonomy, against a hegemonic West set on housetraining it at best, dismembering it at worse.

Military-industrial plants are running back-to-back shifts, cities are wallpapered in signs encouraging people to join the army, and the presidential administration has even drawn up draft amendments to the process for notifying the United Nations and the Council of Europe of a declaration of martial law or state of emergency. Given that martial law is already in effect in the four recently-annexed regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson, and de facto states of emergency are in place in the border regions of Belgorod and Kursk, it seems hardly implausible that these could be expanded. Much like under late tsarist rule, Russia may not find itself under martial law on a national level, but in practice most of the country could be covered by one special regime or another.

However regressive and repressive, this is not likely to be the prelude for the kind of apocalyptic fantasies entertained by the hawks, for the some reason that Russia is not really in a position to embrace total war.

Total mobilisation of the reserve would in theory expand the military by millions of men. Even if we stick to a relatively limited assessment and imagine a million men coming under arms, how would they be housed, trained and armed? There are enough ageing Kalashnikovs to equip them, as well as mothballed RPG-7 anti-tank launchers and machine guns. Yet a feudal levy equipped to 1970s standards, while not entirely useless on the battlefield, would be little more than human ammunition. The casualties would be monstrous, the gains questionable. This is especially the case given the lack of cadres to give them refresher training and the supply stocks and lines to keep them warm, dry, fed and rearmed. 

As unprepared men are mowed down, the political backlash would be immense. This is not World  War Two, where the USSR was facing a genuine and obvious existential threat, and where the Kremlin's diktats were backed by an experienced, ruthless and massive murder machine. However thuggishly repressive the FSB undoubtedly is, the agency has nothing like the scale, powers and reputation of the Stalinist political police. Indeed, it is questionable if the rapacious FSB officers of the present, arguably kleptocrats more than mass murderers, have the stomach for that.

After all, the public is largely underwhelmed by Putin's efforts to sell his war as both glorious and necessary. Polls seeming to show majorities in support are in many ways deceptive. First of all, people fear giving a dangerously wrong answer: these days, more than 90% of respondents refuse to answer questions about the war, inevitably skewing the results. Besides, as in-depth interviews by the Public Sociology Laboratory have shown, even those willing to express support do so very conditionally, largely uncomfortable with the invasion but willing to accept that the Kremlin may have had good reasons known only to itself. In practice, it seems very roughly that about a quarter genuinely support the war, a quarter oppose it, and a half are uncertain, or doing their best precisely not to have an opinion.

Mass mobilisation would also take a serious bite out the workforce. As is, defence factories are reporting trouble finding qualified workers, and by offering higher salaries they are stealing labour from other enterprises. Combined with pressure on investment funds, key components and access to maintenance, this means that mass mobilisation would be a terrible blow to an economy already having trouble meeting the current level of state demand.

Putin can have more critics arrested, more NGOs closed down, more elections rigged. He will almost certainly have to hold another partial mobilisation once the September gubernatorial elections are out of the way, needing to find another 200,000-plus to make up for attrition from various causes. More factories will convert to defence production. The resilience of the Russian state is considerable, after all. However, the fantasies of a productive and warfighting effort comparable to WW2's will remain no more than that.

Mark Galeotti is director of consultancy Mayak Intelligence and honorary professor at UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies.