What's behind Russia's biggest conscription drive in years?

Russia is launching its largest conscription drive in more than a decade, expanding its military as talks stall over a potential ceasefire in Ukraine.

President Putin has ordered the call-up of 160,000 men aged 18 to 30. Neighbouring countries will be acutely aware that the Russian army has increased in size from roughly 1 million soldiers in 2022 to a force of 1.5 million in 2025, according to Russian state news agency Tass. The drafts happen twice a year, in the spring and autumn, and this campaign is an increase of 10,000 over last year's spring conscription, and a rise of more than 25,000 compared to three years ago, said Tass.

What did the commentators say?

The Kremlin and the Russian Defence Ministry "both insist that Russian conscripts will not be deployed to combat and that the call-up is unrelated to the conflict in Ukraine", said The Moscow Times. But "as the war drags on for a fourth year, many remain sceptical of the Kremlin’s promises".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Russian authorities may claim this has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, but "in the long term, it has everything to do with the conflict, and the wider geopolitical tensions", said Sky News. Putin's aim is to have a bigger army than America's, with 1.5 million active personnel.

The latest conscription is "a result of this, and it's a sign of Russia's relentless militarisation. Whatever the outcome of peace talks, the Kremlin will remain on a war footing for some time yet."

It certainly highlights that Putin is probably not expecting to sign up to – or abide by – a ceasefire in Ukraine any time soon, Ian Bond, deputy director of the Centre for European Reform, told the BBC. Even if a long-term ceasefire is eventually agreed, Putin would be unlikely to stop there. "We can see what the Russian economy is being retooled to do," says Bond. "And it ain't peace."

Russian conscripts were deployed in Ukraine, a decision that President Putin has previously referred to as a mistake. Where Ukraine "relies mostly on conscription", said Alexander Hill, professor of military history at the University of Calgary on The Conversation, Russia has been increasingly reliant on volunteers in its war with its neighbouring country. "The death or injury of volunteers is far less likely to have a negative impact on wider morale than the death of conscripts."

But "while the official stance is that conscripts are not sent to Ukraine", said CNN, "reports have surfaced of conscripts being pressured or misled into signing contracts that result in their deployment to the front lines in Ukraine". When Kyiv launched its incursion into Russia's southwestern Kursk region in August 2024, at least 25 Russian conscripts were killed, according to the independent media outlet Verstka. The average age of those killed was 20.

What next?

Moscow wants "a one-on-one meeting between Putin and [President] Trump in which they hammer out a deal that stops the war in Ukraine for now – just as Trump wants – in exchange for provisions that leave Ukraine permanently weakened", Alexander Gabuev and colleagues from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said on Foreign Affairs. At the same time, Moscow “was prepared to keep fighting before Trump won, and it remains so today”.

The threat from Russia is being felt beyond Ukraine too. Germany's foreign intelligence service and the country's armed forces believe that Russia views the West as a systemic enemy and "is building up its military power and preparing for a large-scale confrontation with NATO", according to a report by German media organisations Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR and NDR.

The intelligence report seen by the newspaper and broadcasters predicted that by the end of the decade, Russia is likely to have created all the necessary conditions to be able to wage a "large-scale conventional war".