Russia will launch its spring military conscription campaign on Monday which will involve tens of thousands of young people aged 18 to 30, the Russian General Staff announced on Friday. The army assures that these new recruits will not be sent to Ukraine, but the campaign, which is organized twice a year, comes at a time when many Russians fear a new mobilization, after the Moscow attack.
“The spring military conscription campaign will begin on April 1,” a senior General Staff official, Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlianski, said at a briefing. All conscripts will carry out their service, lasting one year, on “the territory of the Russian Federation”, he said.
Conscripts will not go to annexed Ukrainian provinces
They “will not be sent to the deployment posts of the armed forces in the new Russian regions”, namely the four Ukrainian regions (those of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia) annexed by Russia in 2022, and “will not participate in the Russian special military operation, assured the vice-admiral.
For more than two years, the offensive in Ukraine has already led the Russian authorities to decree a mobilization of more than 300,000 people in the fall of 2022. Many Russians fear a second wave of mobilization, despite the assurances of President Vladimir Putin , re-elected in March, that it “is not necessary”.
Moscow had raised the age limit for military service by three years
In 2023, the spring military conscription campaign involved some 147,000 men in Russia, the autumn campaign saw 130,000 conscripts join the Russian army, according to the Ministry of Defense. Vladimir Tsimlianski did not specify how many young Russians were targeted by the spring campaign this year. Last summer, Russia adopted a law extending the age limit for conscription from 27 to 30 from January 1, 2024.
In recent months, Russia has claimed several advances in Ukraine, facing a Ukrainian army lacking men and ammunition due to the running out of Western aid. In December, Vladimir Putin said at his annual press conference that 617,000 Russian troops were in Ukraine as part of the Russian military operation.