Russian lawmakers introduce bill on increasing conscription age to 30

A bill on increasing the maximum conscription age in Russia from 27 to 30 has been introduced to the Russian State Duma, the lower house of parliament, as per the State Duma website.

According to the bill, the conscription age for citizens of Russia will be as follows:

• from 19 to 30 (from 1 January till 31 December 2024);

• from 20 to 30 (from 1 January till 31 December 2025);

• from 21 to 30 (from 1 January 2026).

The current conscription age is from 18 to 27. Adult citizens who have not reached the age of 21 will also be able to undergo compulsory military service if they wish to do so.

The explanatory note states that the bill’s authors propose to raise the minimum conscription age “with the purpose of ensuring that citizens receive both secondary general education and secondary vocational or higher education”.

“The implementation of this proposal will reduce the financial obligations of the federal budget on organising and conducting the medical examinations of conscripts who are receiving secondary general or vocational education by over 639 million rubles (€7.7 million) per year,” the authors claim.

The proposed date of the Federal Law entering into force is 1 January 2024. The authors of the bill are MPs Andrey Kartapalov, Andrey Krasov, and Yury Shvytkin.

In December 2022, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu proposed to gradually raise the starting conscription age from 18 to 21 and the maximum from 27 to 30.

The minister explained that the reason for the measure was the necessity to defend Russia from the NATO countries, which are seeking to ramp up its “military capacity” near the Russian borders.

In January 2023, head of the State Duma Defence Committee Andrey Kartapolov said that Russia could start conscripting people of up to 30 years of age in the coming spring.

The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated in the past that Vladimir Putin supports the idea of raising the maximum conscription age to 30 “conceptually”.