Regional conscription officials send out summonses ‘to check data’ on draft-eligible men

Conscription officials in at least three Russian regions — Lipetsk, Penza, and Voronezh — have started mailing summonses to local draft-eligible men. This has been confirmed by the regional authorities.

The summonses, officials tell the media, are only sent out for the sake of updating the recipients’ information. In Lipetsk, for example, the authorities explain that “as all over Russia,” their draft offices are “digitizing their records.”

The Lipetsk draft official Valery Gerasimenko says it was necessary to summon residents to collect information, since “during the partial mobilization, errors were found” in the records.

According to the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, “it’s only natural that data should be checked and updated.” Peskov also denies any discussions of a new mobilization round within the Putin administration.

A month ago, the independent media project Faridaily reported that a pilot version of an extensive database on draft-eligible Russians had been developed by the government, based on a unified population register that gathers information from the regions.

An official source in Moscow told Faridaily that only a third of the draft records now on hand is up-to-date and accurate. The pilot system is expected to remedy this problem.