Russian General Staff says contract soldiers staff Ukraine operation zone

For its autumn 2026 call-up, Russia intends to draft roughly 120,000 people, with recruits scheduled to leave assembly centers starting October 10. On October 1, Yevgeny Burdinsky, the official overseeing mobilization for Russia’s General Staff, said draftees would receive no combat assignments in Ukraine or in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.¹²³

Contract personnel assigned to operation zone

According to Burdinsky, Russians serving under military contracts make up the units and formations performing missions in the campaign Moscow describes as its special military operation. His statements were reported by TASS following an interview with the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. The claim that conscripts will remain outside the operation zone has not been independently confirmed by the sources in the dossier.³

Meduza reported that conscripts would begin leaving assembly points for their assigned places of service on October 10. Meduza also said the recruits would receive no assignments connected to the operation anywhere in Ukraine, including the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions.²

The planned intake is lower than the 135,000 people called up in autumn 2025, according to The Kyiv Independent. The outlet reported that a December decree set the total planned number of conscripts for 2026 at 261,000. Meduza said the spring 2026 call-up resulted in over 140,000 recruits taking up their assignments, while The Kyiv Independent gave a total exceeding 141,000.¹²

Year-round processing, seasonal departures

Russia began operating a year-round conscription system in 2026, according to Meduza and The Kyiv Independent. Under that arrangement, authorities can process recruits throughout the year, while conscripts are sent to their assigned posts during the spring and autumn intake periods. Meduza reported that the spring draft ran from April through July 2026.¹²

The latest intake is a compulsory-service draft rather than a new mass mobilization, The Kyiv Independent reported. Signing a military contract changes a conscript’s legal status and allows deployment to combat zones, according to the outlet.¹

Earlier assurances and deployments

The latest undertaking follows earlier assurances about the use of conscripts. According to The Kyiv Independent, President Vladimir Putin stated several times in early March 2022 that conscripts had not been asked to join the invasion and would not go into combat. The outlet reported that Russia’s Defense Ministry subsequently admitted that some draftees sent into Ukraine had been taken prisoner.¹

According to The Kyiv Independent, the Kremlin said Putin directed military prosecutors to examine claims that officials had disobeyed his instructions and penalize those responsible. The outlet also said Ukrainian troops took some Russian draftees prisoner when Ukraine entered Kursk Oblast in 2024.¹

Rights groups and independent reporting have documented cases in which conscripts were pressured to sign military contracts, The Kyiv Independent reported. Because contract signatories may legally be sent to combat zones, those reports distinguish the formal promise not to deploy conscripts from the possible deployment of people who entered service through conscription but subsequently signed contracts.¹