In Ukraine, the new law on military mobilization came into force on Saturday May 18. It expands the number of people who can be mobilized in the ranks of the army, the minimum age for conscription being lowered from 27 to 25 years. Result: in four days, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians presented themselves at military recruitment centers or updated their data on the internet.
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With our correspondent in kyiv, Stéphane Siohan
The government of Volodymyr Zelensky believed the law on military mobilization unpopular. But since it was promulgated on Saturday, no less than a millionUkrainians went to recruitment centers or to a mobile application called “Reserv+” in order to register with the authorities and make themselves available to their country.
This does not mean that everyone will go to fight but that they have proper administrative documents as well as a military card making them potential recruits for the army. The latter needs 300,000 to 400,000 new fresh troops to take over from soldiers exhausted by two years of war.
Prisoners can now apply for military service contracts
The particularity of the new legislation is that it allows prisoners to apply for military service contracts. In April, nearly 4,500 detainees expressed the wish to join the ranks of the army. Over the past four days, 3,000 of them have taken the step of registering for the mobilization while the authorities predict that between 10,000 and 120,000 prisoners could be affected by this new measure.
It should be noted that this system does not concern detainees imprisoned for murder, rape or other types of sexual violence or for crimes against national security.
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