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Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada passes bills on extension of martial law, mobilization

The bills were introduced to the Verkhovna Rada by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on Monday

MOSCOW, May 8. /TASS/. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed the bills on extension of martial law and mobilization in Ukraine for 90 days, lawmaker Alexey Goncharenko (included in the list of terrorists and extremists in Russia) announced.

"The Rada prolonged the martial law and the universal mobilization for 90 days," he said on his Telegram channel.

Goncharenko specified that 339 lawmakers voted in favor of extension of the martial law, while 336 voted in favor of extension of the mobilization. Lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak announced on his Telegram channel that the martial law and the mobilization will be prolonged until August 11.

The bills were introduced to the Verkhovna Rada by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on Monday.

The martial law and the universal mobilization in Ukraine were declared on February 24, 2022, and have been repeatedly prolonged since then. The Ukrainian authorities do everything they can to prevent men from avoiding the military service. The forceful methods of mobilization have escalated the controversies in the society; men of conscription age seek to leave the country by any means, often risking their own lives in the process. Despite that, on April 16, Zelensky signed the controversial law on tightening of the mobilization, which will make it possible to draft additional hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to the army.

In addition, the repeated extension of the martial law made parliamentary and presidential elections in the country impossible. In this regard, the legitimacy of Zelensky, whose five-year term in the office expires on May 21, is being challenged.

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