The Russian military will not impose a one-year service limit for mobilized soldiers despite requests from the soldiers’ families, St. Petersburg opposition politician Boris Vishnevsky said Wednesday.
Vishnevsky, a veteran Kremlin critic and member of the St. Petersburg legislative assembly, said his request on behalf of the soldiers’ relatives for Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to back the proposed limit was met with resistance.
Quoting a letter — dated Dec. 5 and signed by S. Drozdov, the acting head of the Russian Armed Forces’ General Staff mobilization unit — Vishnevsky said service limits are established by President Vladimir Putin’s corresponding decree.
“Establishing a different period of military service for Russian citizens called up as part of partial mobilization is deemed inexpedient,” the letter reads.
Calls to impose a one-year service limit for mobilized troops have been championed by a fast-growing group of mobilized soldiers’ wives and mothers called Put’ Domoi (The Way Home).
Some 300,000 reservists were called up to boost Moscow’s manpower in Ukraine under Putin’s “partial” mobilization drive that he announced in September 2022.
Putin declared an end to the mobilization campaign a month later but did not formalize it in writing, saying he “hadn’t really even thought about” issuing a presidential decree.
Russian authorities have since digitized military summonses and tightened punishment for draft evasion, prompting some observers to speculate the Kremlin may be preparing for a new mobilization campaign while the first wave is technically still in place.
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