In Russia, the age of the draft may change in the fall, if the corresponding bill is submitted to the State Duma in the spring, and the law is adopted before the summer. About this RIA Novosti reported Head of the Defense Committee of the Federation Council Viktor Bondarev.
“The bill introducing these changes should be tabled this spring. In that case, we hope to pass it in the current spring session, and it will come into effect if it is supposed to pass next fall,” the senator said.
According to him, the document can be submitted to the State Duma by the government, since the head of the Ministry of Defense took the initiative. A bill to raise the age of conscription is currently in preparation.
The senator noted that such work requires a thorough and integrated approach. “Therefore, it is hardly possible to adopt and start applying this document before the start of the spring call,” Bondarev stressed.
Now the attention of the Ministry of Defense, deputies and experts is focused on not missing important details when preparing a draft law for submission to the State Duma, noted the senator.
According to him, it is necessary to agree on modifications of the age limits on both sides: the age of conscription is raised to 30 years, whereas it should begin at 21 years.
“Thus, more mature and psychologically mature people will serve in the army,” Bondarev added.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in December 2022 the need to raise the age of the project. He proposed raising the minimum age for conscription from 18 to 21 and the maximum age from 27 to 30. Since then, no official clarification or document about it has been released. In January, the head of the department announced that large-scale changes in the composition of the Russian armed forces, including an increase in their numbers, would be carried out in the period 2023-2026. On January 19, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defense Committee, called “zero” the probability of conscription this spring from the age of 21, not from 18. “The fact is that before you call someone, you have to legalize all that,” he explained. The MP’s colleagues on the defense committee also said they knew nothing of plans to raise the draft age by spring. At the beginning of November last year, Deputy of the Crimean State Duma Mikhail Sheremet proposed increasing the length of military service from one year to two years. According to him, “the current format does not imply high-quality training of a soldier.”
