MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/. Members of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada have blocked the parliament’s central lectern over the situation with a draft bill which bans calling up for military service those men who received their military ID card before they turned 25 and lets those already mobilized be discharged.
"The lectern is being blocked with demands to approve the bill in its entirety. Servant of the People officially spoke against it," legislator Yaroslav Zheleznyak wrote on his Telegram channel. Thus, the draft bill was only approved in the first reading.
On April 2, the age of mobilization in Ukraine was lowered from 27 to 25, eliminating the category of those with limited fitness, and establishing rules for the online delivery of summonses in the future. However, later, multiple cases were reported when men under 25 were called up, and the bill was supposed to prevent these categories of citizens from being mobilized.
General mobilization was announced in Ukraine in February 2022 and has been extended several times since then, with the authorities doing everything possible so that draft age men cannot evade military service. Military recruiters regularly conduct raids and use coercion and force, and even those unfit for military service end up being called up. Videos regularly appear on social media showing military officers trying to forcefully hand out call-up orders in the streets, in public transport, or in gyms, and many Ukrainian men, according to media reports, literally shun leaving their homes for months on end to avoid encounters with recruiters or try to leave the country, frequently risking their lives. Reports periodically emerge of men being beaten up at recruitment centers. On May 18, a bill on toughening mobilization rules came into effect allowing to recruit additional hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.