As the war, or ‘Special Military Operation,’ between Russia and Ukraine continues, the Russian parliament, the State Duma, has passed new legislation that will raise the mandatory age of conscription from 27 to 30.
Starting on January 1st of 2024, Russian men aged 18-30 will be eligible for conscription into military service for the period of a year. The bill was initially proposed by a number of MPs including Chairman of the Duma Committee on Defense Andrey Kartapolov, the Russian state media outlet TASS reports.
The conscripts will not, however, be eligible to fight for the Russian Federation abroad, Reuters notes, but also highlights the fact that Russia annexed several regions of Ukraine last September where conflicts are still ongoing as part of the ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO).
The new legislation, which is aimed at increasing the capacity of the Russian armed forces, comes after Russia announced last year that it wished to bolster the number of professional and conscripted armed forces members by around 30% or 1.5 million men.
The law also allows for conscripts to sign a year-long professional contract with the Russian armed forces during martial law, wartime, amid mobilisation along with other armed conflicts and any Russian foreign deployments. Such contracts will only be available to conscripts who are about to finish their conscription terms, however.
Russian regional governors have also been handed new powers under the legislation to create special paramilitary units during times of war or mobilisation in order to combat saboteurs and ensure public order is maintained.
Part of the role of the paramilitaries will be to combat the use of drones and other unmanned vehicles, which have been used in Russia several times since the country’s invasion of Ukraine, notably in Moscow and Crimea earlier this week.
Russia blamed Ukraine for attempted drone attacks in Moscow that damaged two buildings in the Russian capital on Monday after they were shot down, with the Russian defence ministry stating, “A Kyiv regime attempt to carry out a terrorist act using two drones on objects on the territory of the city of Moscow was stopped.”
A Ukrainian defence source later told the AFP that the Ukrainian armed forces were behind the Moscow drone attack and that Ukraine’s military intelligence, the GUR, had been involved in it.
The new law increasing the age of potential conscripts comes just days after President Vladimir Putin signed a law increasing the age limit for citizens with military ranks lower than officers, increasing the ages by five years.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has been under martial law since February of 2022 and this week President Volodymyr Zelensky requested a 90-day extension from the Ukrainian parliament. All men aged 18 to 60 are eligible for military service and with few exceptions are not allowed to leave the country.
As Ukraine’s alleged counteroffensive continues, very few real gains seem to have been achieved since it began last month, though some progress has been reported in and around the city of Bakhmut.
Ukrainian Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed that Russian forces are semi-encircled in the city last week saying, “At the moment, the deployment of Russian troops resembles an arch, concentrated in Bakhmut. And they are under semi-encirclement. Well, it’s impossible not to take advantage of that.”
Senior Ukrainian officials have admitted that controversial cluster munitions, provided by the United States, are also being used in the fighting around Bakhmut. The U.S. under President Joe Biden had previously claimed that the use of cluster munitions, which are banned in over 100 countries, was tantamount to a potential war crime before announcing they would be sending them to Ukraine earlier this month.
Fierce fighting has also been reported this week in the Zaporizhzhia area, with Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Lieutenant-General Igor Konashenkov claiming Wednesday that Ukraine had engaged in a massive attack on Russian forces.
“From the morning of July 26, the enemy resumed intensive offensive operations in the Orekhov area. It carried out a massive attack by three battalions reinforced by tanks,” Konashenkov said and claimed Russian forces had repelled the attack, destroying “22 enemy tanks, 10 infantry fighting vehicles, an armoured combat vehicle and over 100 Ukrainian personnel.”
