MOSCOW, December 26. The Batkivshchyna party will not vote in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine for a new draft law on mobilization; it considers it unconstitutional, party leader Yulia Tymoshenko said.
Vladimir Zelensky at a press conference on December 19 said that he was approached by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a request to mobilize an additional 450-500 thousand people. On Monday, the Ukrainian government introduced a bill on mobilization to parliament. It, in particular, proposes to abolish military service, deferment of mobilization for disabled people of the third group, to oblige those liable for military service to register in the conscript’s electronic account, undergo a medical examination, and appear when called to the military registration and enlistment office at the time and place specified in the summons. The document also obliges all persons liable for military service to arrive at the military registration and enlistment office within 60 days from the date of announcement of mobilization or within 20 days from the date of its continuation, regardless of receipt of the summons. The lower age limit for mobilization, according to the bill, is reduced from 27 to 25 years.
“I’ll tell you straight away that in the version in which the bill is presented, it does not solve the problem, it is ineffective, it is unconstitutional, and in this form our team will not vote for it,” Tymoshenko said in a video posted on the social network Facebook*.
Tymoshenko added that mobilization in Ukraine is simply necessary, but “such laws will not solve the problem” of the shortage of military personnel at the front.
Verkhovna Rada deputy Alexey Goncharenko, who represents the European Solidarity faction of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s party, in turn, said that the bill requires revision. “Every line of the project contains the fate of people, and in response there are zero answers, you can’t do that. It can’t be accepted in this form. It needs to be significantly reworked,” he wrote in his Telegram channel.
A martial law regime has been introduced in Ukraine since February 24, 2022; the next day Zelensky signed a decree on general mobilization. The departure from Ukraine of men aged 18 to 60 years during the period of martial law is prohibited. In October, Time magazine, citing a Zelensky aide, reported that the ranks of Ukrainian troops had become so thin that military registration and enlistment offices were forced to conscript people with an average age of 43. In turn, the New York Times previously reported that Ukraine is seeking to attract more women to the army, which indicates huge losses in the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
* The activities of Meta (social networks Facebook and Instagram) are banned in Russia as extremist