Defence Minister Rustem Umerov has said that Ukraine intends to call up Ukrainian men living abroad for military service from the reserve starting next year. He said this in an interview with Bild, Welt TV and Politico, DW reports.
Ukrainians between the ages of 25 and 60 living in Germany and other countries will have to report to recruitment centres.
Umerov noted that it was an invitation to report to the recruiting stations, but at the same time made it clear that those who evade would face sanctions.
"We are still discussing what should happen if they do not come voluntarily," the minister said.
Update. In a comment to Babel, Illarion Pavlyuk, head of the Press and Information Department of the Ministry of Defence, explained that Bild had shifted the focus. According to Pavliuk, the minister generally spoke to journalists about recruitment and the need to convey to Ukrainians abroad how important it is for them to join the army. There was no discussion of mechanisms for recruiting to the Armed Forces from abroad on the agenda.
- At a recent press conference, the President of Ukraine said that the military had asked him to mobilise another 450-500,000 people. The president said that in addition to mobilisation, demobilisatio
- n should be regulated by law.
- Valeriy Zaluzhnyy, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, said that mobilisation should be returned to its previous level. He added that now it is a problem for the guys who are fighting on the front line, and someone has to replace them. When asked about the impact of the dismissal of regional military commissars on the effectiveness of mobilisation, Zaluzhnyy said that "they were professionals, they knew how to do it, and they are gone".
- Zelenskyy made the decision to dismiss all regional military commissars in the summer amid a scandal over the wealth of some regional military commissars. Not only those with suspicious wealth were dismissed, but all of them.