Why Russia is not ready for mobilization

The head of the “School of the Conscript” explains what legal gaps exist in Russian legislation and how they will be eliminated with the help of the Ministry of Defense

By Verstka

The head of the “School of the Conscript”, human rights activist Alexei Tabalov spoke about the problems that arise in the legal system after Vladimir Putin announced “partial mobilization”. According to him, Russia is not ready for mobilization, because “no one has ever thought about it.”

“No one knows how it should work,” says the human rights activist. “No one imagined that someday mobilization would be possible in Russia. In this sense, there are a lot of legal gaps. They eliminated some of them yesterday, but they did not eliminate others. Therefore, it is not clear what, for example, is the order of the military registration and enlistment office, according to which citizens are called up for military service, for mobilization. It is not clear how the movement is carried out with the permission of the military registration and enlistment office, how the border control regime is carried out in the event of a mobilization announcement. There is none of that.”

According to Tabalov, the Russian authorities will have to eliminate legal gaps with the help of so-called temporary orders. The human rights activist assumes that the Ministry of Defense will issue such orders to individual departments to organize mobilization.

“I think that the Ministry of Defense is the instigator here, and it is they who should agree on the procedure for actions with the rest of the departments, distribute powers and responsibilities,” says Tabalov. – For example, with the Ministry of Internal Affairs in terms of involving the police in mobilization activities, with the FSB in terms of the border service. Now they will twitch, in convulsions, figure out how to regulate all this.”

In the published decree on “partial mobilization”, citizens called up for military service were equated with contract soldiers. Tabalov also considers this a legal conflict.

“If you look at the status of a serviceman under a contract, then they have the right to days off, to a daily routine, to a work schedule, to leave military service, to come to military service,” the human rights activist says. “How does this fit in with mobilization? It seems to me that the Ministry of Defense itself and the Kremlin do not understand what they have done. How one fits in with the other, I don’t know. Commenting on the actions of the Russian authorities is an impossible task for a normal person.”

According to the head of the “School of the Conscript”, he has been receiving hundreds of calls since the morning. The main question asked by those who applied is: “Do I or my loved one fall under the call?”. The human rights activist says that the answer to it in 99% of cases is “Yes”.