A new conscription law should be more practical, according to the Russian Senate. In fact, there is little escape for Russians.
The Russian Senate has passed a controversial law allowing electronic conscription into the military. The new system is “more practical,” emphasized Senate President Valentina Matviyenko on Wednesday. Senators passed the bill by 163 votes in favor and one against.
Accordingly, recruits will in future be prohibited from leaving the country as soon as they have received the call-up order electronically. Previously, this had to be delivered personally. So far, many Russians have escaped conscription because they remained unreachable or left the country. A soldier doesn’t even need to have read the notification: the order automatically migrates to a database called Gosuslugi.
Critics point out that the new law will make it much easier to call up soldiers for deployment in Ukraine. Concerns are therefore already being voiced in Russia that further mobilization is imminent. There are good reasons for this: the losses at the front are high and number in the hundreds of thousands, depending on the sources. At the same time, it is obviously difficult to get additional personnel. The head of the Wagner mercenary troupe, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is said to have already offered a salary of 2,700 euros – and even recruited over the phone himself.
Russia recruits new soldiers twice a year, in spring and autumn. This year, 147,000 citizens between the ages of 18 and 27 are expected to be drafted between April and July, according to official documents obtained by CNN.
“This is the beginning”
“We have long awaited the second wave of mobilizations, and this is the beginning,” Irina, a 51-year-old psychologist whose son is of mobilization age, told US broadcaster CNN from Moscow. “These changes have already impacted me by contributing to a sense of insecurity and fear.” In the first wave of mobilization, people were picked up at home by the police. That didn’t go down well. Now try a new way.
With the new law, it will hardly be possible to evade military service. Anyone who does not appear at the convocation office loses civil rights. These include not only the right to leave the country, loans are also affected and even the driver’s license, reports the “Spiegel”.
Kremlin declines
So far, the Russian troops have consisted of regular units, several private mercenary armies and those recruited more or less by force in the Russian-controlled “People’s Republics”. In the Russian regions, governors try to find volunteers who want to earn a good salary – mostly without knowing what awaits them on the job.
According to the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), Russia could mobilize up to a million more soldiers. “Last fall, around 300,000 people were mobilized and recruited, some of whom are still being trained, some of whom have already been introduced to combat,” BND boss Bruno Kahl told the editorial network Germany in February
However, the Kremlin emphasizes that no further mobilization is imminent and that the short time span in which the law was introduced is not unusual. The law is necessary “to bring order to our system of registration and conscription,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The day before, the members of the Russian lower house had voted unanimously in favor of the new regulation. The text will come into force as soon as it is signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
