Turns out the convict meat shields were even too much of a liability for Wagner. Being "out of troops" doesn't mean you can't raise/train more, it just means that the current force you're deploying is no longer combat effective for any number of reasons. The winter operational pause was enough time for them to at least plug the gaps.

Problem is, if he wants to mobilize more conscripts, sooner or later he's going to have to start dipping into manpower from the Moscow region, which is where his political alliances are. They've been avoiding conscripting from those regions like the plague.