Russian lawmakers approved a bill today that provides for military conscription to be year-round, not just in the spring and fall, the Associated Press reported, noting that the authorities are seeking to fill the ranks amid more than four years of fighting in Ukraine, BTA reported.
The legislation, which was approved today by the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) on the third, final reading, turns military conscription into a year-round process.
Once the bill is approved by the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian parliament) and signed by President Vladimir Putin, it will allow military conscription services to call up new recruits for medical examinations and other procedures at any time of the year.
According to the authors of the bill, the measure is intended to relieve pressure on the draft authorities and streamline their work, which includes the process of conducting medical examinations and distributing recruits to different military units.
Although the bill would turn the call-up of soldiers into a year-round process, it provides for recruits to report for military service only within a few months during the spring and summer - from April 1 to July 15 and from October 1 to December 31, as was the case until now.
Currently, all men between the ages of 18 and 30 are required to serve in the army for a year, although many of them avoid conscription by taking advantage of the deferrals available to students and people with chronic diseases, for example, the AP notes.
The military mobilizes between 130,000 and 160 000 recruits during each mobilization campaign.
Russian authorities claim that the military does not use conscripts in Ukraine, but relies on volunteers and reservists who were mobilized specifically for this purpose. However, human rights activists and media reports indicate that the military has repeatedly tried to encourage or force many of the recruits to sign contracts as volunteers.
Russia, which had an army of 1 million when Putin sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022, has been gradually increasing its size amid the ongoing fighting, the AP recalls.
Last year, Putin ordered the number of regular troops to be increased by 180,000 soldiers, to 1.5 million. Last month, the Russian president said the army had deployed more than 700,000 soldiers fighting in Ukraine.
As part of efforts to combat draft evasion, authorities earlier this year opened an electronic registry for draftees to submit their draft applications online. They have also imposed a number of legal restrictions on those who ignore the draft, including banning them from making bank transactions, suspending their driver's licenses and banning them from traveling abroad.
Amid Russia's military setbacks early in the conflict, Putin ordered a "partial mobilization" to 300,000 reservists in the fall of 2022 - a widely unpopular measure that has led hundreds of thousands of Russians to flee abroad to avoid being drafted into the military, the AP reports.
While Putin's decree left the possibility of calling up more reservists "open," the Kremlin has changed course and focused on bolstering its forces with volunteers who have been offered relatively high salaries and other benefits.
The authorities said about 440,000 volunteers have joined in 2024, and another 336,000 have signed contracts with the army this year.
Lawmakers also approved another bill today that would allow reservists to be used to protect "critical facilities" in some areas - a measure that, according to its authors, is intended to strengthen protection against Ukrainian drones, which have already managed to penetrate deep into Russian territory, more than 1,000 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
The measure will not apply to all reservists, but only to those who have voluntarily signed contracts for active service in the reserve.
The Kremlin is increasing the number of military personnel after Putin opposed US President Donald Trump's demand for a quick ceasefire agreement in Ukraine and maintains his maximalist demands, which include the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from four regions that Russia has annexed but failed to fully take. Kiev and its Western allies have repeatedly rejected these demands, the AP notes.