Russia to send 120,000 conscripts into service this fall, again pledges to keep them from the warfront
The announcement comes as Russian strikes continue to hit Kyiv, including an overnight attack that killed one person and damaged a 25-story residential building
Russia plans to send about 120,000 conscripts into compulsory military service between October and December, according to Col. Gen. Yevgeny Burdinsky, head of the Russian General Staff's mobilization department. Burdinsky said conscripts will begin departing assembly points for their places of service on October 10, and reiterated that they will not be sent to carry out combat tasks in Ukraine or in the four partially occupied Ukrainian regions Moscow claims to have annexed.
Moscow has made similar assurances before. President Vladimir Putin repeatedly said in March 2022 that conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine, only for Russia's Defense Ministry to acknowledge days later that some conscripts had already been deployed and captured. The Kremlin later said Putin ordered military prosecutors to investigate officials who violated his instructions.
Rights groups and independent reporting have since documented additional cases of conscripts being pressured into signing military contracts that legally allow their deployment to combat zones, as well as conscripts being drawn into fighting during Ukraine's 2024 incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast, where some were captured by Ukrainian forces.
This autumn's call-up is smaller than previous drafts, down from 135,000 conscripts in autumn 2025 and 141,000 in the spring 2026 call-up. A December decree signed by Putin set Russia's total planned conscription for 2026 at 261,000 people.
The announcement comes as Russian forces continue to strike Kyiv. An overnight attack killed one person and injured two others after a strike damaged a 25-story residential building in the capital's Darnytskyi district, local authorities reported. Russian forces also struck Kyiv's Southern Bridge again overnight, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said, following multiple drone strikes on the crossing a day earlier.
The attacks follow a large-scale Russian missile and drone assault that began September 30, which killed four people and injured at least eight while damaging residential and energy infrastructure in Kyiv. Russian drone strikes on October 1 had already damaged the Southern Bridge's road surface, a bridge support, a guardrail, and a protective concrete structure around the metro line, disrupting both metro and surface transportation across the crossing.