The age of spirits is growing – Newspaper Kommersant No. 42 (7487) of 03/14/2023

A draft law on raising the age of conscription into the army from 18–27 to 21–30 years has been submitted to the State Duma. The authors of the amendments, United Russia deputies from the defense committee Andrei Kartapolov, Andrei Krasov and Yuri Shvytkin, propose to carry out the reform within three years. According to their plan, the upper bar for conscription will be raised to 30 years next year, and the lower one will be raised gradually: to 19 years in 2024, to 20 in 2025 and to 21 in 2026. Such a measure will allow the Ministry of Defense to help solve problems with staffing, the expert believes. Another indicates that the military department “needs not only more mature, but also well-trained military personnel.”

In December last year, speaking at the collegium of the Ministry of Defense, the head of the defense department Sergei Shoigu proposed to increase the draft age. The draft system should be reformed “in stages”, the minister noted, stressing that this is not an initiative for discussion, but in fact a military task, which should be a “retaliatory measure” to NATO’s attempts to build up “military potential” (in particular, “at the expense of Sweden and Finland ”) at the borders of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Mr. Shoigu proposed to increase the number of servicemen in the Russian army to 1.5 million people. President Vladimir Putin agreed with him, six months earlier he ordered to increase the number of military personnel in the armed forces to 1.15 million people. The task of the Minister of Defense will be fulfilled this year, Andrey Kartapolov, chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, said in January. He published a comment in which he called on the military registration and enlistment offices to “figure out how many people fall under the new requirements” within two months and “bring this data in line with the military task.”

The legislative initiative took shape by March, the amendments were submitted to the Parliament by members of the Duma Defense Committee – in addition to Mr. Kartapolov, Andrey Krasov and Yuri Shvytkin were co-authors. They proposed changes to the law “On military duty and military service” and the law “On alternative civil service”, but the project was postponed until next year.

According to the amendments, the draft age will be increased in three stages:

• from January 1 to December 31, 2024, citizens aged 19 to 30 will be subject to conscription,
• from January 1 to December 31, 2025 – from 20 to 30 years,
• from January 1, 2026 – from 21 to 30 years.

The adjustment “will make it possible to exclude the appearance of schoolchildren and students in the military commissariats” to receive a deferment during their studies, the explanatory note to the project says.

The gradual increase in the draft age from 18 to 21 years will help, the deputies hope, “reduce the financial obligations of the federal budget” for organizing and conducting medical examinations of conscripted students by more than 639 million rubles. in year. “Every year, about 675,000 citizens exercise their right to deferment from conscription for military service in connection with education, including under general education programs — more than 35,000 people and secondary vocational education — almost 390,000 people,” they explain authors of the bill.

The deputies propose to increase the upper limit of the draft age “as compensation” from 27 to 30 years. So, “for citizens aged 27 to 30 years old who are in the reserve, and who have not completed military service by conscription, without legal grounds,” the authors provided for “the opportunity to do military service by conscription, if they have such a desire” .

The deputies explain that annually about 80,000 people who have reached the age of 27 and have not completed military service are removed from the military registration of conscripts. About 30,000 of them “have no legal grounds for doing so,” the project says.

In addition, “about two thousand people annually” under the age of 30 acquire Russian citizenship – they, too, “will be affected by the provisions of the bill,” the authors point out.

All the authors of the bill were unavailable for comments to Kommersant on Monday. The department also did not respond to a request for the participation of the Ministry of Defense in the development of the document and the need to finalize the initiative.

Earlier, military expert Valery Shiryaev emphasized in an interview with Kommersant FM that during the transition period of three years, “two bases will merge – conscripts from 18 years old and after 21 years old.” According to him, “now there are problems even with conscription for relatively small assignments that are issued by the military registration and enlistment office. A city with a population of 30-35 thousand sometimes owes from 80 to 200 people for conscription. At the same time, the quality of their health has deteriorated sharply.”

One cannot ignore the “rational grain” in the proposed amendments, says the head of the human rights organization “Conscript’s School” Alexey Tabalov. He points out that “a person at the age of 18–19 is still weakly responsible for his actions” and an increase in the age limit for military personnel “looks reasonable”: “We are increasing the number of mature contingents and at the same time reducing the logistics costs of military enlistment offices for medical examinations.” On the other hand, raising the upper bar to 30 years, according to the expert, “speaks of the desire of the Ministry of Defense to expand the recruiting base” and “the department’s problems with staffing.” Mr. Tabalov believes that the Ministry of Defense, both in units and in the reserve, would like to see “not only more mature, but also well-trained servicemen who were trained not for ten days or three months, but at least a year.” The expert is concerned about citizens between the ages of 27 and 30, whom the project concerns so far only in terms of voluntary service. Mr. Tabalov does not rule out that the bill can be finalized “not for the better for them” at the stage of the second reading in the State Duma.

Maria Starikova