Kartapolov: the draft age for military service will be from 18 to 30 years

The lower limit of the draft age for military service will not be raised to 21 years. This was announced by the chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrei Kartapolov, specifying that the draft age will be from 18 to 30 years, writes “RIA News”.

“The main thing is that the upper limit is 30 years, the lower limit was decided to be 18, because a lot of guys want to go to serve at the age of 18,” he said.

According to him, these norms will come into force during the spring call in 2024. The Committee supported these amendments.

Amendments are being made to the bill to gradually increase the draft age. Initially, it was assumed that the draft age would be gradually increased from 18 to 21 years, and the limit – from 27 to 30 years. According to the text of the document, which was submitted for the first reading, the draft age in 2024 will be from 19 to 30 years, in 2025 – from 20 to 30 years, and from January 1, 2026 – from 21 to 30 years. The explanatory note to the draft states that raising the lower limit of the draft age to 21 will make it possible to receive a guaranteed secondary general, secondary vocational or higher education.

At the same time, Russians who have reached the age of 18, even after January 1, 2024, can be enrolled in military service before the draft age, if they express such a desire and submit an application to the draft commission. Citizens in the reserve at the age of 27-30 who have not previously completed it without legal grounds can also go to military service at will.

The bill was submitted to the State Duma on March 13, 2023. Its authors are Andrei Kartapolov, Chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, Andrei Krasov, his first deputy, and Yuri Shvytkin, deputy. Document on first reading was accepted June 14th.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu made a proposal to gradually increase the draft age in December 2022 at an expanded meeting of the board of the military department (where he also proposed increasing the number of military personnel to 1.5 million people). President Vladimir Putin conceptually supported the idea of ​​a phased increase in the draft age, Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the head of state, reported in January.