Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered 160,000 more Russian citizens to be called up to serve in the army, the Russian news agency Interfax reported on Monday.
They range in age from 18 to 30. The new order, starting April 1 and ending July 15, comes amid ongoing negotiations for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the United States.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims that Russia is dragging out the peace process as it prepares a massive new offensive to seize more Ukrainian land before real peace talks.
"According to our intelligence, Russia is preparing for new offensives in the Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions," Zelensky said last week.
"They are dragging out negotiations and trying to drag the US into endless, meaningless discussions about false conditions to buy time and then try to grab even more land. Putin wants to negotiate territory from a stronger position. He only thinks about war. So our job - all of us - is defense in the broadest sense of the word," he added.
However, US President Donald Trump, who on Sunday said he was "upset" by Putin's desire to remove Zelensky from power so a peace treaty can be made possible, still believes the Kremlin leader will keep his word and that he wants the war to end.
Some conscripts will also be discharged from the army after serving their term. Independent Russian journalists have been able to verify the names of over 100,000 Russian soldiers who have been killed since Putin invaded Ukraine, although Kiev claims overall Russian losses are approaching a million dead and wounded since March.
Ukraine has lost more than 46,000 troops and over 380,000 have been wounded, Zelenskyy said in February. In March, Kiev managed to improve the survival rate of Ukrainian soldiers, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in a statement on Monday.