Digital conscription notices to be introduced in Russia from 1 April

Russian military commissariats will begin to send out digital conscription notices as part of spring conscription 2023, representative of the General Staff Vladimir Tsimlyansky said during a briefing.

“Employees of military commissariats are tasked with notifying citizens in electronic form during the preparations for the spring conscription campaign, which is set to begin on 1 April. In case of the lack of technical means [of completing this task], the conscription notices will be given out [the usual way],” Tsimlyansky said.

According to him, this became possible after the creation of a digital database that relies on information received from different state bodies.

“This year, the procedure of military registration was conducted in a new format. For the first time, we received information from different federal, region, and municipal authorities digitally. Furthermore, in an effort to prevent mistakes, the information was duplicated in print form,” the man clarified.

Still, according to lawyer Dmitry Zakhvatov, “digital conscription notices” will have no legal force: “conscription notices have to be handed out by military commissariats’ employees and a conscript has to sign for it. <…> There’s no alternative. You can safely assert that no such thing as a digital conscription notice exists. The legal significance of an ‘electronic notification’ will be null and void under the law.”