From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / September 30, 2025
As Moscow announced a new conscription cycle and record defense spending, Ukraine struck deep into Russian territory while diplomatic battles raged from Budapest to Chisinau
The Story of a Single Day
On September 29, 2025—the 1,314th day of the war—Russia revealed the machinery behind its continuing offensive. President Vladimir Putin signed a decree launching the fall conscription cycle, calling 135,000 young Russians to military service. The Kremlin submitted a budget dedicating 38 percent of federal spending to war and security. And across occupied territories and Russian rear areas, Ukrainian forces demonstrated their capacity to strike back, hitting military production facilities and downing helicopters with improvised weapons.
This single day captured the war’s grinding reality: Russia mobilizing its population and treasury for indefinite conflict while Ukraine adapted, innovated, and punched far above its weight. From the frozen calculations of Moscow’s budget planners to the split-second decisions of Ukrainian drone operators downing Russian helicopters, September 29 revealed a conflict with no end in sight—only escalation, adaptation, and the relentless accumulation of casualties on both sides.
Putin’s Decree: 135,000 More Russians Called to Service
The decree Putin signed on September 29 was bureaucratic in its precision but chilling in its implications. Russia would conscript 135,000 citizens between October 1 and December 31 for twelve months of mandatory military service. Officially, these conscripts would serve only on “Russian territory” and would not participate in combat operations in Ukraine. The reality was far more complicated.
Deputy Chief of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky emphasized that the upcoming conscription cycle was “not related to the war in Ukraine.” Conscripts would only serve on Russian territory and would not conduct tasks related to the war—meaning they would not serve even in occupied Ukraine that Russia illegally defined as “Russian territory.” The Russian military command would start sending conscripts to assembly points on October 15, with a third receiving specialized training in training units and at military bases.
But Russian law’s prohibition on deploying conscripts to combat had already been violated in practice. Conscript border guards had participated in combat during the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Oblast, causing particular discontent in Russian society. The distinction between “defensive” service in border regions and “offensive” combat operations had collapsed under the pressure of Ukrainian operations on Russian soil.
These conscripts would become reservists after their twelve months of service, joining a pool that Russia could call up in the future. They were notably different from the active strategic reserve that Russia had reportedly been forming of soldiers who had signed contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense. But Russian officials continued to deceive and coerce conscripts to sign military contracts to increase the number of servicemembers deployed to combat in Ukraine or to the active strategic reserve.
Voice of Ukraine 