New round of Russian conscription will include Ukraine's occupied territories.

Russia's fall conscription campaign, set to begin Oct.

1, will officially include regions of Ukraine under military occupation, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Sept.

29. The fall 2023 conscription will include the illegally annexed areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The decree, signed into law by Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, will call up 130,000 conscripts.

Russia conducts two conscription campaigns per year, in spring and fall. Young men aged 18-27 are required by law to enlist for a year of mandatory military service. In July, Russian lawmakers raised the maximum conscription age to 30, a change that will go into effect in January 2024.

On Sept.

25, Ukraine's National Resistance Center announced that Russian proxy authorities in the occupied territories were preparing systems to register local conscripts. The Russian state news agency TASS claimed that no conscription campaigns were conducted in the occupied oblasts in spring 2023 or the previous year.

Ukraine war latest: Russia reduces offensive pace on Kupiansk-Kreminna line Key developments on Sept.

29: * Media: Ukrainian strike allegedly destroys radar station in Russia * Russian attacks kill 6, injure 13 in Ukraine over past 24 hours * US House approves £300 million for Ukraine * Putin asks former Wagner commander to create 'volunteer units' to fight in Ukraine...

News Editor

Abbey Fenbert is a news editor at the Kyiv Independent.

She is a freelance writer, editor, and playwright with an MFA from Boston University.

Abbey served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine from 2008-2011.