“Hey, hey, Mr. Putin
Ain’t it time to stop the shootin’?”
Bringing back the draft was the obvious way for Putin to escalate without creating a risk of counter-escalation by NATO. It was also a measure he desperately wanted to avoid, because it meant telling the Russian public that, notwithstanding his personal infallibility, the war was going badly, and that all of the previous state propaganda about the success of the invasion was a lie. That in turn created the danger of a higher level of opposition to the war, and by extension, to his rule, since the war belongs completely to him, and not the Russian people.
It was the draft that really mobilized the opposition to LBJ and the Vietnam War. Putin’s security services are obviously more powerful and pervasive than LBJ’s, but the risks are similar. Russian men aren’t going to want to die in Ukraine for a cause that means nothing to them.