Live Ukraine: New Ukraine Mobilization Law comes into effect, minimum age lowered to 25 years

10:40

New Ukraine mobilization law comes into effect, minimum age lowered to 25 years

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a new mobilization law, which lowers the minimum age for mobilization from 27 to 25 years. The controversial law has been on Zelensky’s desk for 10 months after the Ukrainian parliament passed the law in June last year.

Even more than then, the Ukrainian army is in urgent need of new soldiers. Russia is launching attacks along the entire front, while Ukraine is facing shortages of weapons, ammunition and manpower. There are soldiers who have not had leave since the beginning of the Russian invasion. In December, Zelensky said the army had asked him for around 500,000 new soldiers. The army has now backtracked on that number: last week, Ukrainian commander Oleksandr Syrsky said the required number had been “significantly reduced.”

Zelensky signed three laws related to mobilization. The rules for the medical examination are being revised. Previously, men could be found ‘suitable’, ‘unsuitable’ or ‘partially suitable’. With the new law, the latter category will disappear, and people who have previously been found ‘partially suitable’ will have to be re-examined. A third law provides for the creation of an online register of conscripts, which should make mobilization faster and more efficient.

Daan de Vries

02:52

Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko wants to participate in elections

Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko plans to run for office in the next presidential election. Poroshenko said this in an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday. Poroshenko still has a significant following in Ukraine, especially among people dissatisfied with the war policies of the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The presidential elections in Ukraine were supposed to take place on March 31, 2024, but were canceled due to martial law and general mobilization since Russia’s invasion. Zelensky stated that now is “not the right time” for elections. Poroshenko also believes that before elections the war with Russia must first be ‘won’, he told Al Jazeera.

Poroshenko, one of Ukraine’s richest people, served as the country’s president from 2014 to 2019. In 2019 he lost the elections to Zelensky. After his presidency, Poroshenko was indicted for treason. He is said to have been involved in the sale of large quantities of coal. That money is said to have been used to finance Russian-backed separatists who fought with government forces and nationalist militias in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.

The now 56-year-old former president has always maintained that these charges are politically motivated. The case against him is at a standstill now that the war with Russia is a priority.

ANP

11:59 PM, Yesterday

Welcome to the live blog of Wednesday April 3

This was the most important news about the war in Ukraine on Tuesday, April 2:

• Ukraine bombed several targets in the Russian republic of Tatarstan during the night from Monday to Tuesday. One of the targets was a major refinery, one of the largest in the country. According to Russian authorities, the damage was not so extensive that production had to be halted.

• The Netherlands will host an international institution that will monitor compensation for war damage in Ukraine. The 44 member states of the Council of Europe decided this during a conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine, which took place at the World Forum in The Hague. The counter is an initiative of the Council of Europe, a European organization that deals with human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

Read Tuesday’s full live blog here.