Mobilisation has not been announced in Russia, but the 2022 decree remains in force and the digital conscription register is now fully operational: draft notices arrive in a personal online account and restrictions follow automatically. We set out who can be called up and on what grounds, what to do when a notice arrives, which legal grounds for exemption actually exist, and what happens to those who fail to appear.
Questions and answers: Mobilisation and draft notices →
October 31, 2026
Forced military contracts: What Omsk reports reveal
Families in Omsk allege that men have been detained and pressured into military contracts. What independent reporting establishes, and how contract service differs from mobilization.
September 21, 2026
A draft notice has arrived: what to do in the first days
The fine for missing an appointment and the twenty-day restrictions both run from the appearance date, while the exit ban, on the letter of the law, covers only conscripts under thirty. These are separate regimes and easy to confuse. What exactly to check in the register, and why the line stating the reason for the summons matters most.
September 21, 2026
Who will not be called up: exemption, deferment and reserved occupations
Limited fitness is not protection: category C releases a man from conscript service but gives him nothing under mobilisation. A reservation issued before June 2024 and never re-registered does not hold at all. And the president can grant or withdraw a deferment by decree without touching the law. Three mechanisms that are routinely confused.
September 21, 2026
Alternative civilian service: how it works
The application is due by 1 April or 1 October, six months before the expected dispatch, not when a notice lands. If refused, a court challenge suspends the decision until judgment, a provision many applicants never hear about. Reservists, meanwhile, have no substitution procedure in law at all. How the service works and where it runs into practice.
September 21, 2026
How to appeal a military commissariat's decision
A court claim does not always halt a call-up: the suspension rule attaches to a regional commission's decision, and going straight to court against a district one does not trigger it, as a court confirmed in 2026. Three routes of challenge, the deadline for each, and how a single complaint lifts every restriction in the register at once.
September 21, 2026
Mobilisation in Russia: what is known as of September 2026
Four things about mobilisation are true at once: there is no confirmed decision on a new mass call-up, the authorities publicly deny one, independent outlets publish source reports saying the opposite, and the state's machinery for registration and enforcement is markedly stronger than it was in September 2022. What is known and what is not, with dates and attribution.
September 21, 2026
What happens if you ignore a draft notice
Twenty thousand roubles in fines and a freeze on selling your flat come from different provisions: one is imposed for missing an appointment, the other switches on by itself and lifts only when you turn up. The criminal article, meanwhile, is not about mobilisation at all. Where the boundaries between the three run, and what counts as a valid reason.
September 18, 2026
Draft Notices Abroad: What Russians Who Have Left Need to Know
Russian consulates have no power to serve draft notices – that much is settled. What is less understood is that the digital register operates regardless of where you are, and the restrictions it imposes in absentia do not expire. What an emigrant is legally obliged to do, how to come off the register by proxy, and what happens on re-entry.