Original Russian-language document. Decree No. UG-341/25 of the head of the occupation administration of Luhansk Oblast, signed 28 March 2025. The decree initiates the spring 2025 conscription call-up in Russian-controlled Luhansk Oblast. Although Luhansk Oblast was formally incorporated into the Russian Federation as a new federal subject in September 2022, the occupation administration retains a distinct executive body alongside the Russian federal structure; this decree is issued under that continued administrative arrangement. The decree is significant for targeting citizens born 1995 to 2007, with the youngest cohort (born 2007) being 17–18 years old at the time of the call-up.
Decree No. UG-341/25 of 28 March 2025 initiates the spring 2025 conscription call-up for male citizens of conscription age in Russian-controlled Luhansk Oblast. The decree targets citizens born between 1995 and 2007, meaning the youngest cohort are aged 17 to 18. The call-up runs for a defined spring period. The targeting of persons born in 2007 — who would have been approximately 15 to 16 years old at the time of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, and who are now aged 17 to 18 in 2025 — is analytically significant: it documents the conscription of persons from the generation that grew up under occupation, who were subject to the Russian education curriculum and mandatory patriotic education programmes from an early age. The decree further documents that conscription in the occupied territories continues under occupation-administration instruments three years after formal annexation, rather than being fully transferred to Russian federal conscription procedures. The targeting of the 2007 birth year cohort for conscription raises questions under international humanitarian law regarding the prohibition on the recruitment of persons under 18 into armed conflict.
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Decree No. UG-341/25
On the Call-Up of Citizens of the Luhansk People's Republic for Military Service. 28 March 2025.
Call-up cohort
Citizens of the Luhansk People's Republic born in the years 1995 to 2007 who are subject to military duty shall be called up for military service during the spring 2025 call-up period in accordance with applicable legislation.
Implementing obligations
- Military commissariats shall organise the call-up and medical examination of citizens in the specified birth-year cohort.
- Local authorities and enterprises shall provide assistance to commissariats in identifying and delivering call-up notices to eligible citizens.
- Citizens who receive call-up notices are required to report to the designated commissariat at the time and place specified in the notice.
Analytical note — youth conscription and IHL
The inclusion of persons born in 2007 in this call-up is of particular legal and analytical significance. Under the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict (OP-CRC-AC), to which Russia is a party, states must ensure that persons under 18 are not compulsorily recruited. The 2007 birth cohort would include persons who were 17 years old at the date of the decree. While Russia contends that this is a standard peacetime call-up of recruits reaching 18 during the call-up year, the ongoing armed conflict in which these recruits would be required to serve makes this distinction legally fragile. The conscription of former LPR residents into service in the war against Ukraine constitutes, under Ukrainian law and the position of most international bodies, a violation of international humanitarian law regardless of the recruits' age.