Russia has initiated its largest military draft in 14 years as reports indicate Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing a spring assault on Ukraine despite ongoing peace negotiations to end the three-year war. 

Putin has called up 160,000 men as part of the country’s bi-annual conscription drive as Russia seeks to beef up its military ranks.

According to the legislation, citizens aged 18 to 30 will be called up for mandatory military service through June 15. The spring draft marks the largest conscription campaign since spring 2011, when 200,000 men were called up for service. Last year, 150,000 men were called, following 134,500 in 2022.

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The Kremlin and Defense Ministry insist the latest conscripts are not being sent into combat and that the draft is unrelated to the war in Ukraine. Russian authorities say troops deployed to Ukraine only include volunteers who signed contracts with the military.

Some draftees, however, fought and were taken prisoners when the Ukrainian military launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August.

President Donald Trump has been trying to secure a ceasefire deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Getty Images | Fox News Digital)

Putin said late last year that Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

It comes as a report suggests the Kremlin is preparing a six- to nine-month offensive across the Ukrainian front, potentially stretching over 1,000 kilometers, according to The New Voice of Ukraine. Potential targets include Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhya oblasts, as well as the Kursk Oblast, where they’ve seen recent success.

The offensive is also aimed at maximizing pressure on Ukraine and strengthening the Kremlin’s negotiating position in ceasefire talks, Ukrainian government and military analysts said.

Meanwhile, U.S.-led talks attempting to broker a ceasefire deal appear to have stalled. The U.S. has struggled in its efforts to secure an immediate 30-day ceasefire, despite Moscow saying it agreed with a truce “in principle.” 

Negotiations have continued since the infamous dust-up at the Oval Office in February between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. (Getty Images)

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Rebekah Koffler, a former DIA intelligence officer who specializes in Russia’s war-fighting strategy and Putin’s thinking, told Fox News Digital that Putin’s goal with his conscription drive is to prolong the fighting.

“There’s no ceasefire and no peace plan between Russia and Ukraine to be had,” said Koffler, the author of a best-selling book “Putin’s Playbook.” “What President Trump seeks is regretfully, unachievable. Putin’s goal is to keep fighting, in order to compel Ukraine to capitulate.”

Trump is trying to secure a peace and rare earth minerals deal, while on Sunday the president said he did not think Putin was going to go back on his word for a partial ceasefire.

Koffler, meanwhile, said the latest conscription numbers are intended to ensure that the correlation of forces on the battlefield and in reserves, continues to favor Russia. 

“Now that Germany and France are considering to deploy reassurance forces into Ukraine, Putin is factoring in those numbers, so he is increasing his force’s posture, to deter such a deployment or failing to prevent it by force.”

A car, destroyed by a Russian drone, in the center of Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 29, 2025. Two people were killed in a massive attack on the city. (Sofiia Bobok/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Putin has prepared Russia for a long, protracted conflict, in which he wants the Russian forces to be ready to fight till the last Ukrainian and the last missile in the NATO arsenal,” Koffler said.

She said Putin is also considering the possibility of having a direct kinetic war with NATO, in the event that NATO decides to deploy forces into the theater in Ukraine. 

“So, he intends for these mobilization numbers as a deterrence value and battlefield utility, if it comes to that.”

Fox News’ Rachel Wolf and The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

These are the key events on day 1,133 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

These are the key events from Tuesday, April 1:

Fighting

• Ukraine’s Air Force reported that the country had experienced its first night free of attack by Russian drones since December, though Moscow had launched two cruise missiles, which were successfully shot down. It was not immediately known why Russia had not launched drone attacks.
• More than 10,700 combat drones and decoy drones – which are intended to draw fire from Ukrainian air defences – have been launched by Russia since the start of the year, Ukraine said.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces took control of the village of Rozlyv in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine’s military said Russian forces had launched five attacks on Rozlyv and the nearby village of Kostiantynopil, but did not acknowledge whether Rozlyv had fallen into Russian hands. The Ukrainian General Staff said late on Monday that three battles were still going on in the area.

• DeepState, a Ukrainian blog that tracks the 1,000km (600-mile) front line between Russia and Ukraine, reported Russian advances over the past 24 hours near Rozlyv, as well as heavy fighting further east near the contested town of Toretsk.
• The governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Ivan Fedorov, said Russian shelling killed one person in a front-line settlement that he did not identify.
• Ukrainian officials in the Dnipropetrovsk region said Russian shelling injured three people in the town of Nikopol.
• The acting governor of Russia’s Rostov region, Yury Slyusar, said Ukrainian drones damaged two high-rise buildings in Taganrog city. He said 85 residents were evacuated from one of the buildings.
• Russia advanced 240 sq km (93 sq miles) into Ukrainian territory in March, marking a slowdown for four months in a row, according to data from the United States-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Moscow’s advances slowed each month since peaking at 725 sq km (279 sq miles) in November 2024, ISW data shows. Russia took nearly 150 sq km (57.9 sq miles) less in March than in February. Despite these slowdowns, the last 12 months have been marked by Russian troops advancing in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told a news conference that tens of thousands of people in southern Ukraine’s Kherson were left without power after Russian strikes damaged a power facility.

Ceasefire

• German Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock said that “due to the deadlock” between the US and Russia on forging a ceasefire deal, support by European allies for Ukraine in its war against Moscow was “absolutely crucial”.
• Russia cannot accept US proposals to end the war in Ukraine in their current form because they do not address problems Moscow regards as having caused the conflict, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said. He suggested that Moscow and Washington have so far been unable to bridge differences which Russian President Vladimir Putin raised more than two weeks ago when he said US ceasefire proposals needed reworking.
• Senior officials in the administration of US President Donald Trump discussed in recent days the likelihood that the US will be unable to secure a Ukraine peace deal in the next few months and are drawing up new plans to pressure both Kyiv and Moscow, two US officials familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency. White House and US State Department officials acknowledge that Putin is actively resisting Washington’s attempts to strike a lasting peace accord and have discussed what, if any, economic or diplomatic punishments could push Russia closer to a deal, the sources said.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again accused Russia of violating recent ceasefire agreements mediated by the US and called for sanctions on Moscow.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry likewise accused Ukraine of launching new drone attacks on energy facilities in Russia’s Belgorod region and in the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
• Half of the US Senate – 25 Republicans and 25 Democrats – joined together to propose sanctions that would be imposed on Russia if it refuses to engage in good-faith negotiations for peace with Ukraine.

Aid

• Zelenskyy said he hopes Germany’s presumptive next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will approve the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to bolster Ukraine’s defence against Russia. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz had firmly opposed sending Taurus missiles, citing fears of escalating violence.
• Zelenskyy said a closed-door meeting with military officials from several partner countries will take place on Friday to further discuss the possible deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine as part of future security guarantees.
• Ukraine has received another $3.8bn in financial support from the European Union, Kyiv said.

Sanctions

• The value of Russian assets frozen in Switzerland since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has risen by nearly $2bn in the past year to more than $8bn, the Swiss government said.

Regional security

• Polish authorities said they charged a 47-year-old Ukrainian citizen with working for Russian intelligence after he was discovered last month conducting reconnaissance of military facilities in Poland.
• Sweden, where authorities have warned that the country should prepare for the risk of war, has announced a 100-million krona ($10m) investment to check and renovate its civil defence shelters. Sweden has 64,000 defence bunkers with space overall for about 7 million people. The move comes as Sweden and other European nations have announced plans to step up defence spending in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and doubts about Trump’s commitment to NATO.

• Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said the country plans to withdraw from the international treaty banning antipersonnel mines, the latest signatory moving to ditch the ban over threats from Russia.
• France said it will deliver several hundred Mistral surface-to-air missiles to Denmark, as French President Emmanuel Macron and Denmark’s King Frederik X pledged a “stronger” Europe. The move comes as Denmark has sought European backing to counter Trump’s threats to take over Greenland.
• The United Kingdom government said that anyone working in the UK for the Russian state will have to register on a new list launching in July or face jail. UK Minister of State Security Dan Jarvis told parliament that Russia would be subject to the most stringent restrictions of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme.

Diplomacy

• Chinese President Xi Jinping is to be the guest of honour when Russia marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with the annual Victory Day parade in Moscow’s Red Square on May 9, Putin said.
• Putin received the wanted leader of Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs, Milorad Dodik, in the Kremlin, a day after Dodik had announced a visit to Moscow.

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Iran’s nuclear programme, the state of affairs in Central Asia, as well as the conflict in Ukraine and the need for a lasting peace agreement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow said.
• France’s new ambassador to Russia arrived in Moscow, several months after his predecessor left, as tensions between Paris and the Kremlin remain high over Ukraine.
• Senior Russian official Kirill Dmitriev is expected to visit Washington, DC, this week and will meet with Steve Witkoff, a Trump administration official, for talks about strengthening relations between the two countries as they seek to end the war in Ukraine.
• Ukraine said that Kyiv and Washington were holding new talks on an agreement that would give the US access to Ukrainian natural resources in return for more support.