if I had to guess, he wants a domestically acceptable reason to use mobilized conscripts. The cost of relying on volunteer contract soldiers is breaking the bank. They keep having to raise the signing bonuses and pay to convince new people to come in on contract. Mobilizing conscripts would be much cheaper since they get payed a flat rate that the government decides.

He’s fishing for incidents, attempting to ratchet up tension domestically, trying to create a situation where it becomes politically feasible to start using conscripts. Last time he tried the domestic response scared the shit out of him.

I don’t think he can provoke the scale of incident he would need though. Like, regardless of how good his propagandists might be, if he couldn’t turn Ukraine blowing up a 1/4 of the strategic bombers, or creating a fuel shortage by blowing up refineries in to a rally around the flag moment, then how would Poland shooting down a fight jet do it, or Poland flattening a drone battery? It just seems like him grasping at straws as his capacity to maintain the fight diminishes.