As usual, spring conscription to military service began on April 1 in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously signed a decree calling for 147,000 conscripts to be drafted. That is about eight percent more than the average of previous years. In the spring of 2022, for example, there were 134,500.
The spring enlistment is accompanied by a publicity campaign to encourage the young men to enlist in the military. In this context, the Bloomberg news agency, citing informed sources, reported that the Russian army command wanted to recruit 400,000 new fighters to use them in the war against Ukraine.
At the same time, the Russian Ministry of Defense rejects rumors and reports that there should be another mobilization. “The General Staff is not planning a second wave of mobilization. Those who have already been called up for military service and those who are volunteering for the special operation will do,” says Vladimir Tsimlyansky, who works for the department at the Russian General Staff responsible for mobilization . Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine can only be described in Russia as a “special military operation”.
Advertising for the contract service
Sergey Chernyshev is the head of an educational institution in Novosibirsk. This is to advertise the contract service in the Russian armed forces. The director of the private Novocollege received relevant material from the city authorities. Chernyshev then posted a flyer on social media promoting the benefits young people allegedly get from enlisting for service in the Russian armed forces.
“You have to be completely screwed to post something like this on your web. I think the authorities have mistargeted this ad because students have to join the army later. It’s crazy to ask them to drop everything and go in change military service. Are you looking for complete idiots? Also, it goes against our values that education must be separated from politics,” Chernyshev said.
Meanwhile, the “Taiga.Info” portal reports that the city of Novosibirsk is sending out similar flyers to property managers. They are asked to put up advertisements for service in the army “on bulletin boards, on front doors and in stairwells”.
Kremlin wants army reinforcements
In January 2023, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced army reforms. Their strength is to be increased from 1.15 million to 1.5 million men by 2026. However, experts consider it unrealistic to recruit so many fighters in such a short time. At the same time, the Kremlin has proposed raising the draft age from 18-27 to 21-30. For the time being, however, the deputies of the Russian State Duma only want to raise the upper limit, with the lower limit to follow gradually. This increases the circle of those who can be drafted into the army.
Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has decided to restructure the army (archive photo)
But the current spring convocation has nothing to do with this reform. Alexei Tabalov, head of the human rights organization “School of the Conscripts”, believes that conscription for military service “is being held according to old rules”. Only the target for recruiting conscripts was increased. Sergey Krivenko, head of the human rights group Citizens.Armee.Recht, agrees with Tabalov’s assessment: “This is the last or the penultimate conscription, in which only under 27-year-olds are drafted.”
Shortly before the spring draft, the Russian Ministry of Defense launched a campaign for contract service in the army. According to human rights activists, a contract was also promoted during the mailing of the notices to conscripts in March. In addition, officials advertise on Telegram, flyers are also placed on the websites of many municipalities and hung up in registry offices, libraries and sports schools.
Do conscripts go to war zones?
Despite assurances by the Russian authorities that conscripts would not take part in combat operations in Ukraine, appeals by citizens whose relatives are either in the combat zone or in the immediate vicinity continue to appear in the media. Galina from the Altai region complains that her son has been threatened that he could be sent from Novosibirsk, where he is doing his military service, to the Belgorod region: “Why should he go to the border with Ukraine after three months of service. The President ordered that no conscripts be sent into the combat zone.”
But human rights activist Alexey Tabalov confirms that this is happening: “We regularly receive reports that conscripts are being sent to the border areas with Ukraine for military service.”
Russian recruits (archive image)
In early March 2022, Vladimir Putin declared that no conscripts would take part in combat operations in Ukraine. But the Department of Defense was quick to acknowledge mistakes and admitted that conscripts had indeed been spotted in the combat zone. This is also confirmed by relatives of dead crew members of the cruiser “Moskva”, which sank in the Black Sea in April 2022 after Ukrainian rocket fire.
In recent months, it has also become known that conscripts are being assigned to build shelters and dig trenches in the border areas with Ukraine. Relatives of conscripts are posting more and more photos and videos that confirm this. “The fact that the Department of Defense wants to replace mobilization with recruiting more citizens for contract service in the army indicates that conscripts are most likely the most important target group for this advertising campaign,” Tabalov said. He fears that in the future there will be more cases in which conscripts are forced to serve in the army.
Adaptation from the Russian: Markian Ostapchuk
