To do that he will be admitting to the public that the standing army he has been exalting all of these years is but a fantasy and that the losses are larger than they have been letting on, I read the USA was saying in men and material he has lost nearly 25% of the standing forces available, the fact they are returning damaged vehicles back to Russia to repair has to be an indication of the state of play with their reserves, if its easier to patched up a damaged tank than replace it, those in storage must be bad.
It's going to be a hell of a shock to the Russian public to learn their sons are being fed into the meat grinder to replace those losses they have sustained and even with general mobilisation, they are going to need to equip, train (even basically) and transport them to the front, top that off with the sh*t supply lines that are struggling to support the army at the moment, a bunch of extra mouths to feed and supply may hopefully cause those supply lines to collapse.
All the turkeys on Russian news spouting the "I think we are already in WW3 now, and it's NATO's fault" are obviously following the script to allow Putin to announce the war and blame the West..
What Ben Wallace has said
https://www.thenationalnews.com/worl...re-war-in-may/