Russia raises maximum military draft age to 30

The lower house of the Russian parliament on Tuesday voted in favor of a bill increasing the maximum conscription age for military service from 27 to 30, in a renewed push by the Kremlin to recruit soldiers to fuel its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

This means that starting January 1, 2024, men aged 18-30 will be subjected to compulsory one-year military service, Russian state-owned newswire TASS reported.

The bill still needs to be approved by the parliament’s upper house and signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to become law.

In recent months, Putin has repeatedly sought to expand the military draft to feed Moscow’s army, which has seen conscripts being sent to the front lines in Ukraine.

Last week, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner paramilitary group, announced that his troops would not return to fight in Ukraine after relocating to Belarus following an aborted mutiny against Russia’s military leadership last month.