CNN reports this with reference to American officials familiar with the intelligence.
The Kremlin began conducting polls inside the country to gauge the popularity of another mobilization. The next wave of conscription, some believe, would be calmer than the first, when Putin himself made a televised statement calling it a “partial mobilization.”
Putin is aware of how unpopular the first mobilization was late last year, when protests erupted and hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers fled the country to avoid conscription, officials said, and he has not yet decided on another mobilization.
But Russia still needs soldiers to throw them into battle.
“We don’t think Putin has yet made up his mind, particularly with regard to when to do it,” the senior Western intelligence official said, “because he almost certainly is concerned about societal blowback and negative economic repercussions.”
Data that Russian President Vladimir Putin is studying the possibility of additional mobilization of another 200,000 people hastened to be denied in the Kremlin.
They are false, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian President, told TASS.
“Yes. It is unreliable,” he answered the agency's question whether this information is as false as the data on the resumption of mobilization in Russia that appeared earlier.