By Galina Korol | 2024-10-21

KYIV -- The Kremlin's autumn draft is in full swing, as up to 133,000 non-reservist Russians aged 18 to 30 will be called into the Russian army between October 1 and December 31.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is scrambling to replace Russians killed and wounded since invading in Ukraine in February 2022, analysts say.

As many as 115,000 Russians have been killed and 500,000 wounded since the start of the war, according to US government estimates, The New York Times reported October 10.

New rules

The new conscripts are being drafted in accordance with a decree signed by Putin at the end of September.

Russia has two drafts a year.

This year the Kremlin changed the rules on serving summonses, which previously required notification in person.

Now each conscript will have a personal account on Gosuslugi, Russia's e-government website. The law now considers a summons to be served one week after it appears in the register.

The register is scheduled to become fully operational nationwide November 1.

Any Russian citizen who fails to report to the enlistment office within 20 days from the date indicated on the summons will be barred from registering businesses, vehicles and real estate; receiving loans; and driving.

Additionally, Russians who receive a summons are automatically barred from leaving the country.

All such restrictions on individuals are subject to removal "within 24 hours" after an offender reports to the enlistment office, officials say.

"E-government services in Russia were not created for the convenience of citizens as officials are claiming," former lawyer and journalist Alexey Baranovsky, who is now a volunteer fighter in the Free Russia Legion, told Kontur.

Instead, they exist "for the convenience of officials and intelligence agencies in working with 'big data,' including to conveniently draft ... men into the Russian armed forces."

Once Russian authorities figure out the new technology and citizen behavior, "electronic summonses will be one of the tools to force everyone into the army," said Baranovsky.

Conscription in Ukrainian territories

Occupied territories of Ukraine will not escape the autumn draft.

"Young men from the province are being called up for the first time to fulfill the honorable duty of defending the Motherland and will serve in units in the Southern Military District," Vladimir Saldo, Moscow's appointed governor of the Russian-occupied part of Kherson province, wrote on his Telegram channel on October 2.

"Conscripts will not serve in the territory where the special military operation is being conducted and will not participate in carrying out missions in the special military operation," he claimed, using Putin's euphemism for the invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian official's statements are hard to believe, said Alexandra Garmazhapova, president of the Free Buryatia Foundation.

"Everything that Putin's Russia and its satellites are doing inside the country indicates that they are intentionally eradicating every norm as much as possible," she told Kontur.

"We heard that there would be no full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and that there would be no mobilization [of reservists]," Garmazhapova said, recalling Moscow's regularly broken promises.

"In a country at war, the main goal of conscription is to replenish the army," Ivan Chuvilyayev, speaker for the Get Lost (Idite Lesom) movement, told Kontur.

The call-up will affect other occupied territories of Ukraine, namely Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia provinces, as well as illegally annexed Crimea, the Ukrainian Center for National Resistance said on Telegram October 2.

Both international law and the Geneva Conventions "prohibit the forced recruitment of the population of occupied territories into the occupier's army," it added.

Ukrainian authorities are monitoring the situation closely.

"No mass preparation for description in the occupied territories has yet been observed," First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Provincial Council Yuriy Sobolevsky said, Suspilne, Ukraine's public broadcaster, reported October 2.

"It has been clear that sooner or later the enemy would use our human resources, that our people would participate in this war," he said.

Worthless official guarantees

Russian authorities at various levels have provided only verbal guarantees that conscripts will not go to war.

Those guarantees have not held up.

"It seems to me that a very illustrative episode took place back in August during the fighting in Kursk," Garmazhapova said, citing Ukraine's surprise incursion into Russian territory.

"Back then, Ivan Alkheyev, the deputy chairman of Buryatia's government, stated that those saying that conscripts would be sent from Buryatia to Kursk province were spreading fake news ... and trying to sow panic," she said, referring to a Russian internal republic.

"He said this on August 20, but by August 25 Buryatia's official websites shared the 'good news' that a prisoner exchange included a conscript from Buryatia, a guy born in 2003."

The Buryatia native was of 115 conscripts whom Ukraine returned to Russia in late August. Ukrainian troops captured almost all of them during initial fighting in Kursk province.

"Putin had reason to declare a counterterrorism operation in Kursk -- because under the law, it lets him send conscripts there," said Chuvilyayev.

"Logically, conscripts should be checking documents and standing at checkpoints," he said.

However, "they were taken prisoner, which means they took part in battles."

Cannon fodder

Under Russian law, conscripts may be sent to any military unit to serve, including on the front and in Crimea.

All conscripts can ultimately expect pressure to join the army after their draft term ends, analysts say.

"They are actively forced to sign contracts," said Chuvilyayev.

"If they don't sign the contract, they are sent into the counterterrorism operation [in Kursk], and if they do sign, they are sent to the combat zone [in Ukraine]," he said. "So, every option is bad and very, very bleak."

To save the lives of potential conscripts, human rights activists and analysts recommend trying to avoid military service by all means.

"Conscripts are a source of cannon fodder for the Kremlin, nothing more. Conscripts have the same job that contract soldiers and mobilized reservists have -- to die for Putin," said Baranovsky.