On April 1 in Russia begins spring conscription for military service, it will last three and a half months – until July 15. RTVI tells how the campaign will go this year, how many people should be called up, where they will be sent to serve, who has the right to be released and fired from the army.
According decree Russian President Vladimir Putin, men aged 18-27 fall under the project – a total of 147,000 people. This is 12.5 thousand more than last year. Conscripts must serve one year.
For residents of the Far North and teachers, the call will start a month later – from May 1. For rural residents involved in sowing and harvesting campaigns – only from October 15.
military age
It is expected that in 2023 the spring draft campaign will be held for the last time under the old rules. At the end of 2022, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed to gradually raise the age of conscription and register for military service from 21 to 30 years old.
In mid-March, the corresponding bill was submitted to the State Duma. If passed, from January 1 to December 31, 2024, citizens aged 19 to 30 will be subject to conscription, from January 1 to December 31, 2025 – from 20 to 30, from January 1, 2026 – from 21 to 30 years.
The bill allows you to continue military service from the age of 18, if a citizen expresses such a desire and writes an application to the drafting committee.
The authors of the document explained that raising the age of conscription will allow Russians to receive guaranteed secondary and higher education, as well as more than 639 million rubles. annually reduce the expenditure of the budget for medical examinations.
Even in the event of accelerated adoption of the bill, the changes will not affect the current spring draft, assured on March 30 Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma committee on defense.
“The draft law on a gradual change in the age of conscripts cannot be implemented in the spring conscription, so the new conscription will be carried out in accordance with the current norms and rules determined by the current legislation , and nobody has to worry about that,” he said.
Where will conscripts serve?
All conscripts will serve in Russia, Vladimir Tsimlyansky, head of the Main Organization and Mobilization Directorate of the Russian General Staff, said on March 31.
A third of them will be sent to training formations and military units, where conscripts will master modern weapons in five months and receive a military registration specialty.
They will not send conscripts to the annexed territories – the DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, said the head of the State Duma Committee on Defense Andrei Kartapolov.
“The reasons are clear. There is a special military operation going on there, they have no business there,” noted He.
There are also no plans to call on the service of citizens of these regions until a “special order”, the MP added. According to him, it will be possible to come back to the question of the conscription of residents of the annexed territories when “a normal situation will arrive”.
The authorities of the Russian regions also stressed that conscripts would not be sent to the area of the military operation.
“Not all conscripts will be sent to the territory of the special military operation. They will serve in their specialties, hone their military skills,” said March 28 Governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov.
Governor of the Kursk region Roman Starovoit noted that “selection for military service under the contract in the parties performing tasks within the framework of a special military operation is carried out separately”.
Who is eligible for exemption from conscription:
partially fit and unfit for service for health reasons, university graduates, sons and brothers of servicemen who died in the line of duty, suspended sentences, under investigation, with a criminal record.
Who is entitled to a reprieve from the army:
full-time students, single fathers, fathers of two or more children, fathers of disabled children up to three years old, men who have a child and a pregnant wife over 26 weeks, guardians of minors caring for a close relative, deputies , employees of the Russian Guard, FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Emergency Situations employees of accredited IT companies with higher education in their specialty.
Insubordination threatens criminal liability (part 1 of article 328 of the Criminal Code). For this, penalties such as fines of up to 200,000 rubles, arrest for up to six months, hard labor or imprisonment for up to two years are provided.
“Second wave of mobilization”
In mid-March 2023, military registration and enlistment offices in Russian regions began to send summonses to those liable for military service, explaining this by the need to “update” data. This sparked talk of a possible second wave of mobilization.
The Russian President’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov called the issuing of subpoenas “standard practice” and said the issue of mobilization had not been discussed. Yuri Shvytkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Defense, explained that sending the summons does not mean that the citizen “will be immediately called up as a person mobilized for a special operation.”
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on March 29 appointed the rumors about the second wave of mobilization are “slander, lies and provocations”. According to him, they are “inflated by provocateurs of pure water” who “especially want to sow panic in the population, to shake up society”.
“We are talking about conscription for military service , it has nothing to do with the SVO. There is work by the military registration and enlistment offices to clarify credentials – also work planned, nothing else is being done,” the mayor stressed.
Vladimir Tsimlyansky, head of the main organization and mobilization directorate of the Russian General Staff, repeated on March 31 that there were no plans to carry out a second wave of mobilization.
“Those who have already been called up for military service, as well as citizens who have voluntarily expressed a desire to participate in the operation, are more than enough to fulfill the assigned tasks,” he explained.
