Two Million More Russians To Fall Under Conscription By New Rules

The upper limit of conscription age in the Russian Federation has been raised to 30 years.

On Friday, November 24, the Russian government approved a resolution to bring the regulatory framework in the field of military registration into line with changes to legislation adopted by parliament, Deutsche Welle reports, citing the Interfax agency. According to these changes, men aged 18 to 30 will begin to be conscripted into the Russian army from January 1, 2024. Until now, the maximum age of conscripts was 27 years.

The State Duma adopted the corresponding amendments to the bill on raising the draft age on July 25. Initially, it was assumed that not only the upper limit of conscription age would be raised, but also the lower one — from 18 to 21 years. However, in the end, it was decided to abandon this idea — the head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, Andrei Kartapolov, explained that supposedly “a lot of guys want to go to serve at the age of 18.”

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed changing the age of conscription for military service from 18-27 years to 21-30 years at the end of 2022. It was assumed that the conscription age limits would be changed in stages.

2 million more Russians will be drafted

With the new age limits, approximately 2 million more Russian men will be drafted in 2024 than would have been the case with the previously active age framework — 9.14 million people instead of 6.8 million, calculated a researcher at the Institute of Economic Policy. Gaidar Igor Efremov. Demographer Alexey Raksha, based on his analysis, gives a similar figure. At the same time, the researchers note that these are approximate calculations that may be inaccurate due to errors during the population census, the inability to take into account migration and other factors.