Russian Army To Be Increased By 400 Thousand People

The military registration and enlistment offices have resumed issuing summonses.

On April 1, the Russian Defense Ministry will start enrolling contract servicemen into the Russian army, having sent out special enrollment notices to the regions, according to which the appropriate documents are to be signed.

Radio Svaboda reports that several regional media outlets have published the total number of contract servicemen to be added to the army according to the Defense Ministry's plans: 400,000.

It is said that staff of the military registration and enlistment offices will do most of the work; governors will be ultimately responsible for implementation of the plan. According to the Defense Ministry's plans, 10,000 people will have to be drafted into the professional service in Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk regions and 9,000 people in Perm Krai.

It is also reported that on Tuesday, residents of Voronezh Region started receiving summonses to the military registration and enlistment offices again, as it was in September of last year after the so-called "partial mobilization" announced by Vladimir Putin. The regional authorities claim that this is being done "solely to update the military registration data".

The Viorstka newspaper writes that the military registration and enlistment offices are trying to compensate for the Russian army's losses in scarce military specialties, currently armoured vehicle drivers and artillery gunners. For his part, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied, as before, plans for a second wave of mobilisation. "There are no such discussions in the Kremlin," Peskov said.

Rumours of a second wave of mobilisation in Russia because of a shortage of manpower to continue the full-scale war in Ukraine have appeared periodically in the media since late last year. The intelligence services of several Western countries and the Ukrainian authorities, among others, have warned about such events. The Kremlin has denied and continues to deny these plans.

According to official figures, more than 330,000 Russians who are in the reserve have been called up for military service as part of the "partial mobilisation" since last September. At the end of October, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu reported the end of mobilisation. After that, Putin also announced the end of the call-up, but did not sign a decree to that effect. Thus, mobilisation in Russia officially continues.

In January, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu announced a target of increasing the Russian troops to one and a half million men within three years. Almost half of them are expected to be contract servicemen. However, the day before, a bill was introduced in the State Duma to raise the age limit for service in the conscript army from 27 to 30 years old.