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It will become more difficult for conscripts in Russia to avoid being sent to war
A bill has been introduced to the State Duma that would allow conscripts to be drafted into the army, even if they appeal the decision of the draft commission in court. The explanatory note notes that the suspension of the contested decision will be a right, and not an obligation, of the court. Now, if a person liable for military service goes to court, his conscription into the army is automatically suspended until the end of the trial.
The Russian army continues to suffer high losses in Ukraine. Analysts from the American Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that Russian losses by the end of 2025 reached almost 1.2 million people - we are talking about killed, wounded and missing. According to estimates by the BBC and Mediazona, at least 200,186 Russian military personnel died during the four years of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Due to the lack of soldiers at the front, the authorities are trying with all their might to lure people to the war. In the regions, payments for the recruitment of contract soldiers are being raised - in the Samara region, its size has increased from 100 to 500 thousand rubles.
At the beginning of this year, a big story happened in the Primorsky Territory. More than a hundred conscripts were forced to sign a contract on the train on the way to their place of service. The conscripts were mocked and deprived of sleep.
Labor migrants from Central Asia become victims of “set-ups” by Russian security forces: drugs are planted on them, then they are sent to prison, and from there they are recruited to fight in the war.
Students are also actively recruited. Human rights activists are already calling this the “second mobilization.” The Ministry of Defense plans to recruit about 80 thousand people into the newly created unmanned systems troops by the end of the year.
We talk about the fate of conscripts and new schemes for luring them to the front with lawyer Artyom Klyga and political scientist Arif Yunusov .
Among the authors of the bill, which could significantly worsen the situation of Russian conscripts, are the head of the State Duma Committee on Defense Andrei Kartapolov and the deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation Dmitry Vyatkin . Both are members of the United Russia party. In April 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law according to which the decision on conscription for compulsory military service is carried out within a year; after some time, a law was adopted on year-round conscription into the army.
It will become more difficult for conscripts in Russia to avoid being sent to war
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Artem Klyga , an expert on the rights of conscripts and military personnel, told Radio Liberty how the new bill will affect the situation of Russian conscripts, and whether young Russians still have options to avoid military service:
In practice, we see that in 99% of cases the courts deny conscripts interim measures; this again strengthens the role of alternative service
- Regarding the possibility of conscripts to challenge the decision of the draft commission in court: in 2021 or 2022, if you went to court even without any formal requirement, it was a definite decree for the military registration and enlistment office to suspend all conscription activities and not send a person into the army. In 2023, this rule was removed into one such norm for municipal draft commissions. That is, if she made a decision on a conscript, he could no longer simply sue. But human rights activists then invented a quasi-tool - to appeal the decision not in court, but in a higher commission. If she refused to consider the complaint, this was appealed in court. This norm was preserved for regional commissions, and in the Russian regions there was no particular activity according to it to send all conscripts to the army.
We explained that the commission’s decision should be suspended, the conscript will appeal everything in court, so we must wait until the court’s decision enters into legal force. But in Moscow, in fact, all these norms were ignored. And from about 2023-24, all the raids that were carried out were, among other things, against conscripts who had just appealed the decision of the draft commissions in court. It was easier in the regions, but now, in fact, it is proposed to abolish this rule altogether. In practice, we see that in 99% of cases the courts deny conscripts those same interim measures. In practice, this again strengthens the role of the alternative civil service. Because the only law where there is now a provision that the decision of the draft commission is suspended until the law on the forceful decision of the court comes into force is the law on the ACS. And now this only applies to those cases that involve replacing military service with an alternative one.
Therefore, while the war is going on, conscript service poses a huge danger, because they don’t have enough people
Therefore, we will increasingly encourage people who do not have an accurate and 100% understanding of their health status to definitely apply for the ACS in order to seek a replacement for military service. Because from there there are risks of ending up in a war. So as not to find yourself in a situation where you are forced to appeal something and are afraid of ending up in a military unit, because there are no longer any guarantees that this will happen. This is the essence of what is changing for conscripts. But I believe that this provision can also be removed from the AGS law. I think all these measures are due to the fact that the state has switched to young people. In 2024, we recorded conscripts being forced to sign a contract, but these were not such frequent requests. But in 2025, things got worse, there were more requests, and there were many more people being forced to sign a contract. News has appeared that young people are being encouraged to sign a contract almost on the trains heading to the military unit. This is done using what can be called torture: when they are deprived of sleep, forced to run around in chemical protective suits, and so on.
Then they started falsifying documents. This has only gotten worse. Therefore, while the war is going on, military service poses a huge danger. We see that the Ministry of Defense is making concrete plans to attract conscripts to sign the contract. Since December last year, students have been recruited into unmanned troops, in fact, not into unmanned troops, but simply into the army, so that later the state will distribute who goes where - 10 percent into unmanned troops, the rest into assault companies. That is, this is all a plan, because they do not have enough people. As we see, a breakdown is taking place, which for a long time prevailed in the Russian consciousness, that conscripts must be protected, because society has traumas after Afghanistan and Chechnya. But gradually Russians are being asked to almost come to terms with the fact that they too can now participate in the war, believes human rights activist Artyom Klyga.
The Russian government is fighting with all its might for the number of contract soldiers: Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law that prohibits the extradition to foreign states for criminal prosecution or execution of a sentence of foreign citizens and stateless persons who are or have served in military service in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation or other formations and participated in hostilities. On July 8, 2025, Putin signed a decree allowing foreigners to serve in the Russian army during the period of mobilization.
On March 11 of this year, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted in the second and third readings a law that prohibits the expulsion from Russia of foreign citizens who have committed administrative offenses if they served in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Political scientist Arif Yunusov explains what these measures mean:
The person ends up in a Russian pre-trial detention center or prison, and then they put pressure on him to sign a contract
-I can’t speak for other countries, but, for example, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Azerbaijan even made an official statement at the end of December last year: those Azerbaijani citizens who were recruited or serve under contract in the Russian Federation and are fighting in Ukraine face 8 to 20 years, up to life imprisonment. I don't know if this has been a catalyst for other countries, but I'm sure others are doing the same. I know that similar appeals were also made in Uzbekistan. The countries of the post-Soviet space take quite seriously those of their citizens who, to one degree or another, fall under recruitment. For example, in many post-Soviet countries, unfortunately, there is a practice of planting drugs. In Russia this is quite widespread and against us. Moreover, we are talking about both citizens of the Russian Federation, Azerbaijanis by nationality, and citizens of Azerbaijan who came as labor migrants. The point is that criminal cases are initiated, the person ends up in a Russian pre-trial detention center or prison, and then they put pressure on him to sign a contract.
Booklets in Azerbaijani were distributed in Baku calling for signing contracts with the Russian army
We don't know the exact number of these people. According to open Russian data as of February, these are at least 65 Azerbaijanis - citizens of the Russian Federation. 47 of them died, 18 people are listed as missing. There is no such information about Azerbaijanis - citizens of Azerbaijan. But we know that in the recently closed “Russian House” in Baku, booklets were distributed in Azerbaijani calling for signing contracts with the Russian army. That is, the recruitment was carried out openly. Then it became the property of the authorities, there were publications in the press, and after that the booklets were removed. But recruitment took place not only in relation to Azerbaijanis who ended up in Russia, but even on our territory. And we have facts that some actually signed contracts in the hope of getting good money. There has been a criminal article for mercenarism in Azerbaijan for a long time. But before it concerned those people who fought in Afghanistan or Syria. When Russian aggression against Ukraine occurred, at first no serious attention was paid to it. Although we had information that at least several hundred Azerbaijanis took part in the war on the side of Russia.
There are no exact data, but at least it is 300 people. At first, the authorities turned a blind eye to this, because in 2022 Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin had good relations. Moreover, before the story of the downed plane, until December 2024, Aliyev said that “Putin and I are in the same boat.” Everything was great. After the plane was shot down, everything changed. In general, the number of Azerbaijanis who now come to Russia to work has decreased significantly. But citizens of other Central Asian countries go there because of problems with work in their homeland. For them, Russia still remains an attractive country. And Russia needs cannon fodder. It’s even better if it’s not from your own country, but from a foreign country. Payments are provided for Russians. This is not the case here either. Most of the non-Russian citizens who died in the war are unknown to anyone. This is very profitable, because you don’t pay anyone and don’t bear any responsibility for the deaths of these people,” political scientist Arif Yunusov is sure.