Mobilization in Russia was announced in September 2022 by a decree signed by Vladimir Putin. However, as Timofey Vaskin, head of the legal department at the Conscript School, told Novaya-Europe, the document was not published in full: the recruitment target and, apparently, the timeframe of the campaign were classified.
After the decree was issued, summonses began to be sent to specific reservists, meaning people who had already completed military service and were registered in the reserve. According to Sergei Krivenko, director of the human rights group Citizen. Army. Law, this category now includes men under 55. In practice, he says, that means almost the entire male population except those assigned fitness category “D”.
By November 2022, the Defense Ministry reported that it had fulfilled its target: according to the ministry, 300,000 people had been drafted. After that, the distribution of summonses specifically tied to mobilization stopped.
“Surprisingly, the mobilization was effectively halted. Since then, not a single decision has been made to mobilize any specific man. We have seen no official documents about this. We have also not seen a single account from victims or relatives whose cases would indicate mobilization,” Timofey Vaskin said.
Sergei Krivenko also said that since that time, human rights advocates have not recorded cases in which a person received a summons and was called up specifically under mobilization.
At the same time, the publication’s sources say that this was when large-scale recruitment to the front through military contracts began. People are summoned to enlistment offices under various pretexts — to “update records,” arrange a deferment, or even over regular conscription matters — and then, rights advocates say, they are persuaded and often pressured into signing a contract.