President Vladimir Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30, Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, as the country moves to expand the size of its military.
The spring call-up for a year’s military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.
That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.
Vice Adm Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine for what Russia calls its “special military operation”.
However, there have been reports of conscripts being killed in fighting in Russia’s border regions and they were sent to fight in Ukraine in the early months of the full-scale war.
The current draft, which takes place between April and July, comes despite US attempts to forge a ceasefire in the war.
There was no let-up in the violence on Tuesday, with Ukraine saying that a Russian attack on a power facility in the southern city of Kherson had left 45,000 people without electricity.
Russia also claimed to have captured another Ukrainian village, at Rozlyiv in the Donetsk region.
Russia calls up conscripts in the spring and autumn but the latest draft of 160,000 young men is 10,000 higher than the same period in 2024.
Since the start of last year, the pool of young men available for the draft has been increased by raising the maximum age from 27 to 30.
As well as call-up notices delivered by post, young men will receive notifications on the state services website Gosuslugi.
Quite apart from its twice-yearly draft, Russia has also called up large numbers of men as contract soldiers and recruited thousands of soldiers from North Korea.
Moscow has had to respond to extensive losses in Ukraine, with more than 100,000 verified by the BBC and Mediazona as soldiers killed in Ukraine.
The true number could be more than double
– BBC
