As the one-month anniversary of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia approaches Friday, Ukraine’s continued control of 500 square miles of Russian land is exposing Russia’s critical shortage of military manpower. After 2.5 years of war, the Kremlin is sending teenage draftees to the front, recruiting men up to age 65 for new territorial defense units, paying sky high signing bonuses for professional soldiers, and calling home units of Russia’s Africa Corps.

President Putin is trying to have it both ways: liberate Russia’s own Kursk region, and, simultaneously, win a bloody, six month campaign to capture Pokrovsk, a key road and rail hub for Ukraine’s southern Donetsk region. Lurking in the background are Russia’s appallingly high casualty figures — more than 600,000 dead and severely wounded since the war started, according to a running tally by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. By this accounting, Russia has lost an average of 31,700 soldiers a month this year — double the average for the first 20 months of the war.

The early sources of cannon fodder are running dry. Prison colonies in southern Russia have closed their doors. Too many prisoners signed up for what turned out to be one-way tickets to the front. By some estimates, the life expectancy of a Russian soldier sent out on a “storm” mission is four to eight hours.

In addition to posting billboards exclaiming “Defend the land of Kursk” the Kremlin is using generous financial incentives to buy soldiers. Tapping Russia’s oil earnings, Mr. Putin doubled in July the monthly salary for contract soldiers to the ruble equivalent of $4,375. That is almost four times the average monthly salary in Russia and 21 times the minimum wage. By contrast, draftees are paid $25 a month. The signing bonus for contract soldiers is now $13,657, the equivalent of one year’s pay for many Russians. Veterans get preferential mortgage rates and access to prestigious universities without entrance exams.

By Russian law, all Russian men between the ages of 18 and 30 have to do one year of military service. By Russian custom, these lightly trained draftees are not sent into combat. This tradition was forged in the wake of Moscow’s disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Last month, Ukraine’s lightning attack caught many draftees in border area assignments that their parents assumed were safe. In the fighting, hundreds died and hundreds more were taken prisoner.

“We, the mothers of conscripts, ask you to remove the conscripts from the areas of military action. They have no experience in fighting back, no weapons,” the mother of a draftee posted in Kursk, Oksana Deeva, writes in a petition to Mr. Putin. “You promised parents that they would not participate in military action,” she exclaims 

Although the online petition has drawn 12,820 signatures, Russian military bloggers have responded with comments that mothers should let their boys grow up. A commander of  Chechen special forces in Kursk, Apti Alaudinov, asked in a video posted on Telegram: “I have one question for you: What use are you and your children to this country?” 

With total control of Russia’s press and most of its internet, Mr. Putin is expected to let the issue slide. The BBC’s Russian Service and the independent Russian news organization Important Stories report that hundreds of conscripts have been sent to Kursk in recent days to defend against Ukraine’s advance.

On the other end of the age scale, the Kremlin is recruiting volunteers “up to age 65” to join new territorial defense units for three Russian regions bordering Ukraine — Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod. Adding a touch of glamor, these “Combat Army Reserves” are known by their acronym “BARS” or “leopard” in Russian.

In reality, this “Dad’s Army” is proving hapless. Last weekend, on rumors that a Ukrainian sabotage unit was breaking through to a key highway, a new BARS-Kursk unit “fired at everything that moved,” Russian war correspondent Roman Saponkov posted on Telegram. When the firing stopped, it turned out that they had fired on Russian soldiers, wounding several. The blogger concluded: “If you are scared, you should stay home.”

More professional help should come from the “Bears.” This is a Russian private military company that was sent four months ago to Burkina Faso to provide security for the pro-Russian coup leader, Captain Ibrahim Traoré. Controlled by Russian military intelligence, the group was called back to Russia two weeks ago to join the fight for Kursk.

“There is no higher honor for a Russian warrior than to defend his homeland,” the Bears’ mercenary leader, Viktor Yermolaev, told Agence France-Presse by telephone. Although Captain Traoré gamely posed for a farewell photo with Mr. Yermolaev, the timing was not good. A few days after the Russians left, Islamic extremists reportedly slaughtered 400 villagers about 90 miles north of the nation’s capital, Ouagadougou. News of the biggest massacre in the country’s decade-long war with the Islamists has caused such a shock that another military coup is possible in a country that was becoming a Russian client state. 

To many analysts, Russia is stretched too thin. Independent Moscow polling group Levada Center came out with a poll Friday that reported that 91 percent of respondents are concerned about Ukrainian military operations on Russian territory.

“Russia is at the limit of its capabilities,” a former American ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, told the Globsec conference at Prague on Saturday. Russia “can’t attack Ukraine and defend Russia at the same time — it has had to make a choice. It’s going to have to move forces from Ukraine to defend Russia.”

From Mr. Putin’s point of view, Ukraine’s Kursk operation is a failure.

“The result is clear. Yes, people are going through difficult experiences, especially in the Kursk region,” he told school children on Monday in Russia’s Tuva Republic. “But the main aim that the enemy had — to stop our offensive in Donbas — it did not achieve.” Indeed, Ukraine is evacuating residents from the eastern city of Pokrovsk as Russia’s invasion of the Donbas region shows no sign of abating. The city of 80,000 is “steadily emptying out and shutting down as the Russians close in,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Although the Kursk gamble has failed to ease pressure on Ukraine’s southern front, President Zelensky told NBC news yesterday that he plans to hold on to the Russian territories indefinitely to force Mr. Putin to the negotiating table. He said that “holding” the Russian land is integral to his “victory plan” for ending the war that he plans to present to President Biden when they meet at New York in two weeks on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly. 

In advance of this meeting, Mr. Zelensky appears to be preparing the biggest shakeup of his government since Russia launched its full scale attack, in February of 2022. Today, six ministers, including the Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, submitted their resignations. This frees Ukraine’s president to replace about one-third of his Cabinet.

With American analysts predicting that Russia will need to field 50,000 soldiers to expel the Ukrainians, the fight over Kursk could easily extend to this winter. Ukraine estimates that 30,000 Russian troops are already in Kursk.

“We can be certain that Putin will mount a counteroffensive to try to reclaim that territory,” the CIA’s deputy director, David Cohen, told the Intelligence and National Security Summit at Washington last week. “Our expectation is that it will be a difficult fight for the Russians.”