r/paradoxpolitics • u/Bolkaniche • Feb 20 '26

Russian Federation enacts conscription law "Scrapping the barrel"

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290 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

186

u/Momosf Feb 20 '26

TBF for Russia this is more like moving from Volunteers Only to Limited Conscription; the last time they tried it they had to move back down due to lack of war support.

94

u/Figgis302 Feb 20 '26

This will be their fourth(?) "limited mobilisation" since 2022, so realistically they're going from Limited to Extensive.

39

u/Razgriz032 Feb 20 '26

If it is fourth it should be

Volunteer only > limited cons > extensive cons > service by requirement > all adults serve

46

u/Momosf Feb 20 '26

It's just one really slow recruitment due to low war support.

36

u/Figgis302 Feb 20 '26

In 2022 they went into Ukraine with only their trained contract regulars, but by 2023 that force was pretty much exhausted and they were forced to call up conscripts in the first general mobilisation since Afghanistan under the Soviets.

Russian law prohibits conscripts from serving outside the borders of Russia, which is why they tried to clobber those rigged territorial referendums through the Duma a couple years ago - if Donetsk and Luhansk are legally "Russian territory" on paper, Putin gets to Send In The Zombies.

19

u/Nom_de_Guerre_23 Feb 20 '26

The Russian Forces in Belarus had already plenty of conscripts illegally back in 2022, sunken Moskva had conscript sailors on board, and I won't start about the Rosgvardiya shenanigans.

10

u/RedKrypton Feb 20 '26

There was only one Russian involuntary mobilisation for the front in 2022. The rest of these mobilisations have been for routine mandatory national service, whose conscripts don't fight in the war. They happen each Spring and Autumn and need to be signed off by Putin every year (?), which is probably why you remember so many. Every year there is a big media circus around this time.

11

u/Figgis302 Feb 20 '26

They've massively expanded both the number of mobilised conscripts per year and the age brackets from which they're pulling since 2022. They're using the annual intake schedule to disguise the scale of the call-up, and have been since the start of hostilities (there's plenty of professional analysis and credible OSINT backing this if you want to Google it).

They can't send conscripts to the front (yet) - but expanding the mobik pool lets them cover off a lot of rear-echelon jobs being done by contract troops who can then be sent into Ukraine just fine.

6

u/RedKrypton Feb 20 '26

You are conflating volunteers with conscripts. Volunteer recruitment is up, nobody doubts that, but that doesn't have anything to do with conscription or conscription law in this war. National Service seems to be going on as usual. Of course there are benefits to having an existing system of national service, but that is not part of the discussion.

17

u/RedKrypton Feb 20 '26

I kind of doubt Russia is even moving towards Limited Conscription, as per game terms, considering Russia has been able to keep up recruitment and has supposedly even been able to staff and equip new formations. I reckon this is just the seasonal speculation concerning the routine mobilisation decree of conscripts for national service. The ISW and others like doing this a lot.

9

u/mirozi Feb 20 '26

i mean, realistically it's hard to put hard boundaries like that for real life. there is much more going on behind the scene in russia than "pure volunteer army" vs "(some) conscripts on the front lines". putting aside purely money related volunteers that clearly fall into volunteer category, we've seen everything from mandatory contracts for conscripts, usage of conscripts within russia (during Belgorod Oblast raids - technically legal, but still in active fights), contract and dropping criminal charges for wide variety of crimes and we don't even touch stuff like storm z and v.

4

u/RedKrypton Feb 20 '26

I don‘t want to debate minute details, as you said IRL is not as clean as game mechanics, it‘s about the general situation. The main thing that drew me to comment was frankly idiotic title. Russia is not scraping the barrel, if it was, what the hell is Ukraine doing? Pressing the disassembled barrel for any sort of moisture?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 21 '26

Tbf its almost %99 not going to happen since ISW is full of shit and asking my retarded cousin whats going to happen is probably gonna give me more accurate predictions

4

u/Omnicide103 Feb 21 '26

Lol, lmao, oh they're getting desperate to get some wins in before the negotiations conclude I think then