Russia calls up 120,000 conscripts this autumn, again promising they will not be sent to fight in Ukraine

Russia is preparing its autumn call-up of around 120,000 new conscripts, who will be sent to military units from October 10, while Moscow again promises they will not be sent to fight in Ukraine — a promise that, as The Kyiv Independent recalls, has been broken before. The announcement was made by Colonel General Yevgeny Burdinsky, head of the mobilization department at the Russian General Staff, who said conscripts will leave assembly points for their places of service on October 10 and will not be assigned combat duties in Ukraine or in the four partially occupied regions Moscow claims to have annexed.

This is not the first time the Kremlin has given such a guarantee. In early March 2022, Vladimir Putin repeatedly said in interviews that conscripts were not being sent to take part in the invasion — but only days later Russia’s Defense Ministry admitted that some conscripts had ended up in Ukraine and had been captured. The Kremlin then said Putin had ordered military prosecutors to investigate and punish officials who had violated his instructions to keep conscripts away from the war.

Even without being officially sent to Ukraine, Russian conscripts were drawn directly into the war during Ukraine’s 2024 incursion into the Kursk region, where some of them were captured by Ukrainian forces. Rights groups and independent reporting have also documented cases in which conscripts were pressured to sign military contracts, after which they can legally be sent to combat zones.

The latest call-up is not a new mass mobilization and is smaller than last autumn’s draft, when 135,000 young men were called up. More than 141,000 were sent into service during the spring 2026 call-up, while a December decree by Putin set the planned recruitment total for 2026 at 261,000 people. Since January 1, 2026, Russia has moved to a year-round conscription system, which allows the authorities to process conscripts throughout the year — although the physical dispatch to military units still takes place in the traditional spring and autumn periods.