The autumnal ranking campaign in Russian aims to recruit about 135,000 young men aged 18 to 30, according to a decree signed by the Russian President
These soldiers should be presented from October 1 to December 31 to serve their compulsory military service for one year. Each year two such recruitment campaigns are being held in the spring and the other in the autumn.
Since the start of the attack on February 2022, the Russian army has assured that the recruits are not developing on the battlefield against the Ukrainian forces and perform only auxiliary work in Russia.
The spring campaign aimed to recruit 160,000 men and the autumn of 133,000.
Question marks to Russia as to whether the recruits are sent to Ukrainian front
These recruits have nothing to do with more than 300,000 reserves who were sent to fight in Ukraine in the fall of 2022 and who had already served their military service in the Russian army.
The development of recruits on the front is a particularly sensitive issue in Russia, especially after Chechnya’s first war (1994-96), where young men serving their term were sent to fight and injured or killed in battles, sparking reactions within the country.
However, during the war in Ukraine, there have been repeated cases of recruits found on the battlefield. In August 2024, Kiev said that he had captured recruits when he launched a surprise attack on the Russian region of Kursk, which borders Ukraine. In 2023, Russia approved a new law that broaden the age limits of recruitment from 27 to 30 years.
