Russia has raised the number of conscripts it aims to call up this spring to 160,000.
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A decree issued by President Vladimir Putin on Monday kicked off a conscription drive—one of two Russia typically holds each year—from 1 April to 15 July, reports said.
The quota is the highest since 2011 and marks an increase of 10,000 from last year’s spring campaign, which called for 150,000 men to be drafted.
In 2024 the figure was 147,000 and in 2022 it was 134,500.
Men aged 18-30 are eligible for a mandatory military call-up—which is not the same as mobilization, where units are being explicitly prepared for combat.
Kremlin officials say that conscripts are not sent into battle, insisting that the draft is unconnected to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
However, Ukraine has claimed to have captured Russian conscripts and Putin has admitted that some were deployed by mistake during the 2022 invasion, The Moscow Times wrote.
Last year, Putin ordered an expansion of Russia’s military to 1.5 million active personnel by 2026—an increase of around 180,000 soldiers, independent news site Meduza reported.
Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky of the Russian General Staff said that a large portion of the spring conscripts would be given specialist training.
“A third of the conscripts will be sent to training military units and formations where within a term of up to five months they will learn to operate modern military hardware and get a military specialty,” he said, cited by the TASS news agency.
With conscripts not typically deployed to the front, Russia has depended on financial incentives and pardons to find recruits for its war in Ukraine, according to The Kyiv Independent.
