Russia aims to tighten rules for exemption from military service

Russia's Defense Ministry aims to tighten army rules to make it harder for conscripts to be exempted from military service, including those diagnosed with syphilis, high blood pressure and severe mental disorders.

This proposal was published only on an official Russian government portal, but the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, a Russian anti-war group, raised the alarm, saying that the proposal "will greatly worsen the situation of conscripts and military personnel" if accepted.

Artyom Klyga, a lawyer from this group, told Current Time that he and his colleagues have been helping soldiers and conscripts obtain medical leave since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

It was only a matter of time before Russian officials began tightening the rules regarding exemption from military service, Klyga said in an interview published on February 6.

“Maybe, I've been waiting all year thinking: 'When will the government start making these changes in order to close this legal gap?'” Klyga told Current Time.

Seven months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, his government ordered official mobilization, which has not yet officially ended, in a war in which Russia has lost over 700,000 killed or wounded.

However, his government has sought other ways to bolster its ranks while avoiding the politically sensitive issue of mass mobilization. These include sending soldiers from North Korea to the front lines and making it easier for convicted criminals and suspects to serve in the military.

The proposed rules, which will make it more difficult to take sick leave even for those who have been drafted or registered to fight, will also change the list of illnesses that exempt a soldier from service in the Russian army.

This means that a soldier will find it harder to avoid military service due to high blood pressure, asthma and obesity. Current rules say that those diagnosed with latent syphilis are not subject to military conscription during peacetime, but the proposed rules now say they are eligible to serve in a range of military roles, such as engineers, signalmen and technicians.

The proposed rules also qualify those diagnosed with severe mental health problems, due to stress and mood swings, as fit to serve in wartime. The current rules classify them as “unfit for military service.”

Klyga told Current Time that, under the proposed rules, there will be diagnoses during mobilization and wartime, meaning that a recruit's or soldier's new diagnosis does not allow for release from military service until these periods are over.

"Many changes have been promised since the 2000s, but none of them touched on the issues of recruitment or mobilization," Klyga emphasized.

"As soon as [mobilization] was announced in September 2022, we realized that we have many loopholes in the legislation," he added./ REL