Ha. Good one there.
No, seriously!
National service in Russia is for one year, usually taken between the ages of 16 and 27. Draft-dodgers face heavy fines and up to two years’ imprisonment. But there are lots of exceptions and ways around that draft, including “alternative civil service”.
So the point of the service is really to make the military look bigger, and pull off big square-bashing parades. There’s no appetite for sending 16 year olds with less than six months of rudimentary training into the front line of a modern war.
“Current law precludes conscripts from deploying to combat with less than four months of training; however, martial law or general mobilization could supersede the current policy, allowing for the immediate employment of new conscripts or mobilized reservists.”
Basically, Putin’s exploited a loophole to make it seem as if this operation falls into that martial law category. But he isn’t in the same boat as Zelenskyy. The only reason there are conscripts in the front lines is because Putin insisted on having this war.