RUSSIAN LAWMAKERS HAVE advanced a bill to create a digital conscription notice system which could bar men from leaving Russia as Moscow’s Ukraine campaign stretches into a second year.

Under the legislation, a draftee would be banned from travelling abroad and would have to report to an enlistment office once electronic call-up papers are received.

Currently draft notices have to be delivered in person in the country, and many Russian men have managed to dodge draft notices by refusing to pick up their enlistment orders and fleeing abroad.

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, approved the legislation on second and third readings.

The bill would next have to be backed by senators and signed by President Vladimir Putin to become law.

The proposed changes come months after Putin ordered in September a “partial” military call-up to boost regular troops fighting in Ukraine in what has become the first military mobilisation in Russia since World War II.

Hundreds of thousands of men have been drafted, while tens of thousands more have fled the country.

The changes to the legislation will make dodging the draft much more difficult.

Military service for men between the ages of 18 and 27 is mandatory in Russia, with conscription carried out twice a year.

Andrei Kartapolov, chairman of the defence committee at parliament’s lower house, said before the vote that the new rules would apply not only to young conscripts but all men liable for military service.

“The draft notice is considered received from the moment it is posted in the personal account of a person liable for military service,” Kartapolov said in televised remarks.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied plans to conduct a second wave of mobilisation, saying the new amendments were needed to “perfect and modernise” the country’s military call-up system.

“This work is absolutely necessary,” he told reporters.

He also said the Kremlin did not expect the legislation to spark fresh panic and more men to flee the country.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Because this is not related to the mobilisation.”

© AFP 2023