After Russian police started using facial-recognition cameras to identify men wanted by military authorities, a young bank worker spent weeks avoiding the Moscow metro. But on snowy Friday evening in late 2024, heavy traffic pushed him underground to visit his mother. At the next station, two officers entered the carriage and detained him for draft evasion.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Within three days, he was sent to a military unit near Moscow for year-long mandatory service. Like other Russian conscripts who described their experiences to AFP, he spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons. The cases show how, amid the war with Ukraine, Russia has hardened its once-avoidable conscription system and the pressure draftees -- officially not sent to war -- come under to sign contracts to fight in Ukraine once inside the military machine. “Before 2022, there were many ways to avoid the draft without doing anything illegal,” said Artyom Klyga, a lawyer with the Movement of Conscientious Objectors. “Now very few legal ways remain.” ‘Record numbers’ It used to be relatively easy to secure a medical exemption, perform alternative civilian service, or avoid the draft by staying in education. Since invading Ukraine, Russia has made conscription year-round, raised the upper age limit from 27 to 30, tightened medical exemptions and introduced an online summons system. Timofey Vaskin of Shkola Prizyvnika, or the School of Conscripts, said the demand to find ways out of service had “risen sharply”.