Translated material
Will they take everyone?
Putin needs people for war. How to avoid being drafted?
For the first time, conscription into the Russian army is carried out with electronic summons. From October 1 to December 31 in Moscow, Mari El, the Ryazan region and Sakhalin, only electronic summons will be sent to conscripts. 135 thousand people aged 18 to 30 will be conscripted into the Russian army.
In 2024, during the autumn conscription, 133 thousand people were sent to the army.
It also became known that about 11 thousand members of the Youth Army movement went to war in Ukraine.
How the state forces people to go to war - a conversation with human rights activist Sergei Krivenko and political scientist Boris Pastukhov.
The autumn conscription has begun in Russia. A decree on this was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin . According to official data , 135 thousand people should be called up for military service. The call will last from October 1 to December 31, 2025. It is noted that this is the largest autumn conscription in the last nine years: more recruits - 152 thousand - were recruited in Russia in 2016. The State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted in the first reading a law that conscription in Russia will soon become year-round.
Putin needs people for war. How to avoid being drafted?
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Experts say that conscription rules in Russia are becoming increasingly strict, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid military service. Do young Russians still have legal ways of not joining military service? – said Sergei Krivenko, head of the “Citizen and Army” project:
Police officers were required to search for conscripts using all their operational tools
- Deferments remain even now, the system of deferrals has remained unchanged. You can avoid conscription for health reasons. If a conscript is unfit for health reasons according to the list of diseases of category B , then he is not subject to conscription. About a third of young people cannot serve in the army due to health reasons, this is a global figure. There is another strategy - run away from the military registration and enlistment office, do not go to the military registration and enlistment office, do not live at the place of registration. Now it is quite limited by the introduction of a digital register of everyone on the military register. Now government agencies are required to send data about a specific person to this register. Everyone sends information about a specific person, and the military registration and enlistment office already owns this data. Precinct officers are required to check and report whether a person lives at the place of registration.
Another important change is that police officers were required to search for conscripts using all their operational tools. They have the operational capacity to catch bandits and criminals, and now this has been allowed to be used to catch conscripts. That is, telephone billing, video cameras in the subway and at entrances, and so on. And so now, especially in large cities, this is becoming quite problematic. The fourth strategy - traveling abroad - is now also limited by these electronic agendas. The only legal path that remains that has not been changed is alternative civil service . You can apply for AGS, the law is still in effect. The number of applications for AGS has increased, but here, too, more obstacles are being put in place, and fewer applications are being approved.
That is, conscripts are already dying without even being on the territory of Ukraine
There remain two big risks for conscripts. The first of them is participation in the war. Conscripts were not sent en masse to the war, but Kursk was there when the war itself came to them. They participate in battles, they are sent to border regions, where they die from shelling, sabotage, and so on. They are sent to the border troops, where they die on the border. They are sent to the fleet, where they also die on the border. That is, conscripts are already dying without even being on the territory of Ukraine. And the second risk is recruitment. When a conscript first arrives at the military registration and enlistment office, his recruitment for a contract begins. We don’t know exactly how many we manage to recruit, this data is classified, but we receive a lot of requests. Let us remember the incident in Chebarkul this summer - the garrison command fraudulently signed contracts for conscripts. The prosecutor's office confirmed this, but they were sent to war anyway. In the Far East, a sergeant killed a conscript when he refused to sign a contract. This shows that recruitment is carried out using rather harsh means,” says human rights activist Sergei Krivenko.
About 11 thousand participants of the Youth Army movement went to war in Ukraine. The chief of the organization’s main headquarters, Vladislav Golovin , spoke about this. According to him, five representatives of the movement have already become Heroes of Russia, and 700 have received the Order of Courage. Over nine years, more than 1.85 million people became members of the Yunarmiya.
Why does the Kremlin need organizations like “Yunarmia” for year-round official conscription for military service? – argues political scientist Boris Pastukhov :
The main goal is to build structures within society that can control a person
-If this is a generational story, then these figures fully cover the current needs of the Russian army, at least on the scale when conscripts sign contracts. But I think that the main goal of this movement is not to replenish the Russian army. The main goal is to build structures within society that can control a person, so to speak, outside of ordinary human life. After all, a normal fascist society is corporatist, so this is a completely competent approach. You should always have an organization looking out for you, a corporation that you belong to. And in conditions when, after the collapse of the USSR, this must be created from scratch, on the fly, during the war, all means are good.
What was the point of members of the CPSU joining the party? Formally, this was training personnel for a march to a brighter future, but in practice the meaning was that you have a structure that includes all the people who are at all respectable from the point of view of the political apparatus. If they try to do something that does not correspond to general ideas about happiness, you can put pressure on them not only directly, but also through the party organization. In the current situation this is also important. If you create institutions that can engage people in something other than family, you have a structure that allows you to build them in the right direction. This is a very effective tool.
Unfortunately or fortunately, profanity is the basis of life of this regime
Another question is that so far it does not look so effective. Unfortunately or fortunately, profanation is the basis of life of this regime, therefore such a wonderful instrument is also profaned. Besides, we haven't reached the end of this story yet. I think that the goal is precisely this - so that by the next generation all young people will one way or another belong to some structures and build a chain of pioneers, Komsomol members and party members. Why not do this through Yunarmiya? But an effective system of fascism or communism requires the activity of people. It is unlikely that the Kremlin is interested in people being active, because for an autocracy, active people can be a problem, says political scientist Boris Pastukhov.