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       lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
       
       
       ARTICLE VIEW: 
       
       /
       
       Zelensky signs law overhauling Ukraine’s mobilization rules
       
       By Olga Voitovych, Radina Gigova, Svitlana Vlasova and Christian
       Edwards, CNN
       
       Updated: 
       
       10:17 PM EDT, Tue April 16, 2024
       
       Source: CNN
       
       Ukrainian President has signed into law a key piece of overhauling the
       country’s mobilization rules.
       
       The legislation places a new requirement on all men between 18 and 60
       to register with Ukraine’s military and to carry their registration
       documents on them at all times. The aim is to make recruitment
       processes more efficient and more transparent, the government says.
       
       Men of service age who are living abroad will not be able to renew
       their passports at Ukrainian consulates without producing up-to-date
       registration paperwork.
       
       The new law does not cover any potential increase in the number of
       people who might be called up to serve.
       
       Neither does it contain provisions for demobilizing soldiers who have
       spent long periods fighting. Ukrainian lawmakers had for months debated
       whether to allow the longest-serving of soldiers the chance to return
       home on rotation, or whether Russia’s renewed offensives meant they
       could not afford to allow exhausted soldiers to rest.
       
       The draft law was amended more than 4,000 times since it was first
       introduced – a measure of how politically difficult crafting the
       legislation has been. Ukraine’s parliament eventually stripped out
       the plans for demobilization to keep as many soldiers at the front
       lines as possible, disappointing many families who had hoped a fixed
       period of three years active service would also be enshrined in the new
       law.
       
       Ukraine’s parliament passed the law last week and Zelensky gave
       presidential approval Tuesday.
       
       Late last year, the leader of Zelensky’s Servant of the People
       faction in parliament said the military was looking for an extra half
       million servicemen and women. But Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief
       Oleksandr Syrsyki said recently any increase in numbers would likely be
       significantly lower.
       
       Zelensky’s signing of the law came shortly after Ukraine’s
       commander on the eastern front warned that Russian troops outnumbered
       its own by up to 10 times.
       
       After the law passed last week, dozens of wives and relatives of
       servicemen gathered outside Ukraine’s parliament to protest and
       demand that mobilization deadlines be included.
       
       Anastasia Bulba, whose husband Vitalii volunteered to join the military
       immediately after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February
       2022, told CNN that Ukraine’s soldiers “have been left without
       terms of service and with no idea when they will be able to return to
       their families.”
       
       “The country’s defenders, on whom the independence of the entire
       country rests, have been deceived,” she said.
       
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