Russia advances measure to draft 30-year-olds into military

Russia moved to force men as old as 30 to join the military Tuesday, as its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its 18th month.

The warring country’s lower house of parliament approved a bill that extended the upper age limit for its mandatory military draft to 30 from 27 years old.

The measure appeared to be an attempt to replenish the country’s pool of fighters in Ukraine — where two independent Russian media outlets estimated earlier this month that some 50,000 Russian fighters had been killed since the invasion began.

As it stands now, only Russian men age 18 to 27 are required to serve in the military, with exceptions offered to students and those with physical problems and illnesses.

An original draft of the bill proposed raising the lower age of the draft from 18 to 21 and implementing the changes gradually over a period of years, but senior lawmakers changed course at the insistence of the Defense Ministry.

The Kremlin has said the military does not deploy draftees to fight in Ukraine, instead relying on volunteers and reservists — but some reports have suggested that Russia coerces draftees into signing contracts as volunteers.

A mandate to conscript 300,000 reservists into battle last September led to a rush on one-way plane tickets out of the country as draft dodgers fled Russia en masse to avoid the grim fate of being thrown onto the front lines.

The bill — which still has to be endorsed by the upper house and signed by authoritarian President Vladimir Putin — has been seen as an indication that Moscow likely expects the war in Ukraine to drag on, as it continues to face fierce resistance along much of the war’s 625-mile front.

Ukraine’s robust counteroffensive had reclaimed more than half of the territory that was initially seized by Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday.

In April, leaked documents showed that the US Defense Intelligence Agency estimated Russia had suffered up to 223,000 total casualties — including up to 180,000 injured.

To put the dizzying pace of deaths into perspective, the US military estimated 58,220 American troops were killed in the Vietnam War over a period of 20 years.

With Post wires