Russia claims conscription push is ‘no way connected’ to Ukraine war as Vladimir Putin calls on 160,000 men
Russia has been called out for an eyebrow-raising statement after Vladimir Putin signed off on a haunting decree.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed off on a fresh conscription push, ordering 160,000 men be drafted by mid-July despite recently promising he wanted the war in Ukraine to end.
It will be the highest number of conscripts since the war in Ukraine began, and serves as a clear signal that the Kremlin is intent on expanding the size of its military as US allies simultaneously bolster their defence spending.
The spring conscription drive will run from April 1 through to July 15, according in a decree published on Monday. It applies to Russian men aged 18 to 30, following a 2023 change that raised the upper age limit from 27.
Moscow has also boldly claimed the draft is completely separate from the massacre unfolding to the nation’s south.
“The forthcoming draft campaign is in no way connected with the special military operation in Ukraine,” Russia’s defence ministry said in a post on social media.
It’s a line the Kremlin has stuck to since the beginning of the full-scale invasion — that conscripts called up through Russia’s bi-annual draft are not sent to the front.
But Kyiv has long disputed that claim after questioning captured Russian conscripts in combat. Putin himself admitted early in the war that some had been deployed by mistake as the chaos unfolded on multiple fronts.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week warned his military had received intelligence that Russia was preparing for another big push in selected areas across the nation.
“According to our intelligence, Russia is preparing for new offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions,” Mr Zelensky said.
The latest draft figure is a noticeable jump from 150,000 in 2024 and 134,500 in 2022, the year Russia launched its offensive. It also comes in the shadow of Putin’s 2023 order to grow Russia’s standing army to 1.5 million troops — an increase of 180,000 soldiers over three years.
Some analysts have viewed it as an escalation and questioned if Putin’s communications with US President Donald Trump were total fluff to placate Washington’s unpredictable new head of state.
“How is Putin showing Donald Trump that Russia is ready for peace?” Doug Klain, a policy analyst for NGO Razom for Ukraine, wrote.
“If Putin is drafting 160,000 new soldiers, how can anyone doubt that he’s lying to Trump about wanting peace?”
While conscription remains the backbone of Russia’s military manpower policy, Moscow has also relied heavily on paid contract soldiers to sustain its war effort, luring recruits with large signing bonuses and high salaries.
In 2022, the Kremlin announced a “partial mobilisation” of over 300,000 reservists — prompting a mass exodus of draft-eligible men from the country.
Scores of Russians began popping up around South East Asia as a result, while several thousand fled the country westward into Europe.
‘It’s not scary to die for the Motherland’
Putin regularly addresses the nation’s youth and has drawn strong criticism for the introduction of mandatory weekly lessons via the nation’s education ministry.
From 2022, students in Russia are required to learn of the importance of dying for their country every Monday morning before regular classes.
“One doesn’t become a patriot by just proclaiming slogans,” reads text from an upcoming mandatory lesson for upper-level children in Russian schools – labelled “Important Conversations”.
“Genuinely patriotic people are prepared to defend their motherland with a weapon in their hands.”
Another repeated slogan from the course — labelled by several critics as an ugly revival of Soviet-era propaganda — read: “It’s not scary to die for the Motherland”.
An independent teachers’ trade union set up by the now-deceased opposition leader Alexey Navalny said the mandatory lectures were in direct violation of Russia’s constitution, which forbids propaganda in schools.
However, the establishment’s stranglehold on dissenters has tightened post-invasion, with those opposed to the Ukraine war facing extreme punishment.
Teachers critical of Putin’s conspicuous attempt at seizing Ukraine have been forced to flee, while political opponents continue to meet uncomfortable consequences for their attempts at democratic discourse.
In a previous message to students in Kaliningrad, Putin described the war in Ukraine as a necessary factor in Russia “defending itself”.
“Everyone is saying that Russia is carrying out some sort of aggression today,” Putin said.
“No one knows or understands that after the coup d’etat in Ukraine in 2014, the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, at least most of them, and of Crimea did not want to recognise the results of the coup.
“Our goal - the mission of our soldiers and the militias of the Donbas – is to end the war, defend the people, and, of course, defend Russia itself.”
Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist who has been critical of the Kremlin, suggested the program was yet another blatant example of the government attempting to shape the minds of children to suit the establishment’s wartime agenda.
“The idea is to instil ideology into young and susceptible minds of children,” Ms Schulmann, who is also an associate at Germany’s Robert Bosch Academy, said.
“If it lasts for 10 years, it can help to raise a generation that even if they don’t enthusiastically uphold these values will at least consider them the way the world is run.”
Tamara Eidelman, who previously worked in Moscow as a history teacher before fleeing, said the patriotic education scheme was a classic case of propaganda.
“We are moving toward a more totalitarian model of education,” Ms Eidelman said.
“When you repeat something endlessly, people start to believe that’s the truth, that’s the law of propaganda.”
Originally published as Russia claims conscription push is ‘no way connected’ to Ukraine war as Vladimir Putin calls on 160,000 men
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