The Russian President, Vladimir Putinsigned on Thursday a decree by which spring conscription ordered. Russia will call up 147,000 people starting April 1. The recruitment campaign will end on July 15.
The decree, published on the Russian Government’s legal information portal, establishes that they will be summoned Russians between the ages of 18 and 27.
The present call-up calls for 12,500 more people than in 2022, when the recruitment of 134,500 people was announced.
The Kremlin announced last September a mobilization of 300,000 men to fight in Ukraine after what hundreds of thousands of young Russians fled the country to avoid being called up.
UK intelligence services said on Thursday that Russian authorities may be preparing “a major military recruitment drive” to recruit another 400,000 soldiersin the framework of the invasion of Ukraine, unleashed on February 24, 2022 by order of Putin.
“Russia is presenting the campaign as a search for volunteer and professional personnel, rather than as a new mandatory mobilization,” they said, before noting that “Russian authorities have probably chosen a so-called ‘voluntary model’ to deal with their staff shortage to minimize internal pushback.” “It is highly unlikely that the campaign attract 400,000 genuine volunteers“, they settled.
Furthermore, fearing a new wave of desertions or abandonment of the country by young Russians, the Russian General Staff came out yesterday to announce that this is not a “forced mobilization.”
“I want to assure you that the General Staff has no plans to (start) the second wave of mobilization,” said Rear Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyanskyquoted by the TASS agency, about the new spring campaign.
According to Tsimlianski, the number of servicemen participating in the military campaign in Ukraine is sufficient to fulfill the tasks set. Approximately 400,000 contract soldiers currently serve in the Russian Armed Forces.
The spokesman for the General Staff added that all the recruits, mobilized within the framework of the current campaign, which will last until July 15, “will serve on the territory of Russia.”
“All recruits will be sent to points of their permanent location located on Russian territory,” he assured, insisting again that “not a single recruit will be sent to the area of the special military operation” in Ukraine. But the truth is that the biannual draft allows recruits to be sent to fight abroad after only four months of military training.
However, the casualties in Russia and the Ukraine do not stop increasing. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported this Saturday, April 1, that Russia had lost 173,990 troops in Ukraine since the start of its full-scale invasion on February 24 last year.
This figure includes the 630 casualties suffered by the Russian forces in the last day alone.
According to the report since 24-F, Russia has also lost 3,616 main battle tanks, 6,981 armored vehicles, 5,528 vehicles and fuel tanks, 2,683 artillery systems, 527 multiple launch rocket systems, 279 air defense systems, 306 aircraft , 291 helicopters, 2,248 drones and 18 ships.
According to experts quoted by the independent media outlet Agentstvo, reported by “The Moscow Times”, enlistment officers are likely to crack down on those who evade the draft to reach Putin’s ambitious target of 147,000 recruits.
The experts also stated that the pool of potential recruits born between 1995 and 2005 has not grown sufficiently to meet the growing demand for fresh troops by the Russian Armydespite the steady increase in birth rates since the year 2000.
“There hasn’t been any increase (in the birth rate), so the idea seems to be to catch as many as possible (of deserters)Ilya Kashnitsky, professor of demography at the University of Southern Denmark, told Agentstvo.
According to “The Moscow Times”, the Russian demographer Alexei Raksha calculates that until 19% of the 770,000 men born in 2004 will receive draft papers during this year’s spring call-up.
“If the fall recruitment is the same, a total of 38% of the class of 2004 (will be recruited) this year,” Raksha told Agentstvo.
Putin increased the numbers of the call-up in spring after giving the green light to the proposal of the defense minister, Sergey ShoiguDecember increase combat personnel of Russia from 1.15 million to 1.5 million.
It should be noted, as recalled in “The Moscow Times”, that in 2024 the new rules that raise the recruitment age limit to 30 years. The lower age limit will also gradually increase from 18 to 21 over the next three years.
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