Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday calling citizens to the 2026 military training camps.

According to the document accessible on the legal information portal, reservists will be sent for annual training, and the Russian government and regional authorities are obligated to organize it.

The decree, which enters into force immediately, contains two classified sections marked “for official use only.” These sections presumably specify the number of citizens to be sent for military training and the duration of this training.

Winter military training is a rare occurrence in Russia. Last year, Putin signed a decree calling for it to be held in January for the first time in 20 years. Similar decrees were signed on March 1, 2024; May 10, 2023; April 26, 2022 and 2021; and June 29, 2020. The 2019 training camp was announced in late February and held in March, while training camps from 2004 to 2018 began between March and June.

Training camps were regularly held in Russia in January in the early 2000s, and Putin usually signed the decree about them in one of the last days of the year.

All young Russians must be sent to six months of military training to prepare for a large-scale war with NATO, Viktor Sobolev, a member of the Russian State Duma’s defense committee and a lieutenant general, had previously stated.

“We [i.e. Russia] do not have a trained mobilization reserve to start a large-scale war if NATO were to start one. One out of ten has served in the [Russian] army, while nine out of ten have never served in the army. What kind of reserve would they form? Everything must change: we must hold training camps, we must train young people through the DOSAAF [i.e. the Volunteer Society for the Assistance to the Army, Aviation, and Navy] system,” Sobolev had explained.

According to him, “One hundred percent of young [Russian] people must have a military registration specialty,” and for that, the military training requires at least six months.