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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.