Until now, young men have been called up twice a year for one-year mandatory military service, Kyiv Independent writes.
Although it is officially forbidden to send recruits abroad, numerous reports indicate that many of them face pressure to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense and be sent to fight in Ukraine.
New recruits will still be sent to the military during the traditional spring and fall call-up periods — April 1 to July 15 and October 1 to December 31 — but recruiting boards and medical boards in military departments will now work year-round.
According to Andrej Kartapolov, the chairman of the parliamentary committee on defense and the author of the law, the reform aims to ease the pressure on the military commissariats.
In Russia, contract soldiers are those who sign professional contracts and form the backbone of the armed forces, while mobilized soldiers are civilians who are called upon to reinforce troops in wartime conditions.
Putin’s 2022 mobilization — Russia’s first since World War II, triggered by frontline failures — led to protests at home and forced more than 261,000 Russians to flee abroad.
Although the Kremlin later declared the mobilization “over,” no presidential decree officially ended it.
(Vijesti.ba)
