KYIV — Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered another 160,000 Russian citizens be called up to serve in the military, Russian news agency Interfax reported Monday.
Russia drafts men aged 18 to 30 years old. The new order, starting April 1 and to be completed by July 15, comes amid the ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the United States.
And that is a huge problem. If he ends the war, there will be thousands of men, most of them traumatized and used to the comparatively good army salary. They will either become mercenaries or criminals.
That assumes they are picking the cannon fodder at random. If they leaned towards the most apt for combat (young, relatively healthy and somewhat stable) then the next batch well probably be worse than the previous.
If they also cheap out more on training and equipment... They might need a batch sonnet than that.
We need that woman to come back and give the new recruits pocketfuls of sunflower seeds. So sunflowers will grow when they die on Ukrainian soil... Slava Ukrayini!
That's literally just a planned spring draft. Happens every year from April 1st to July 15th and then there's the autumn draft from October 1st to December 31st. The planned numbers are higher than before (160k vs 150k in 2024), and I'm sure a number of conscripts will be coerced into signing a contract again, but this isn't exactly an unexpected event.