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Ukraine's Western allies are not imposing new sanctions on Russia in part because of Kyiv's refusal to lower the mobilization age to 18, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with Valasz Online published on June 10. With the start of thefull-scale invasion, Ukraine updated its mobilization legislation and lowered the minimum age for compulsory military service from 27 to 25. Yet, some partners, includingthe U.S., still criticize Kyiv for setting the age threshold too high. "I do not believe that we should mobilize people from the age of 18, as the leaders of other countries have thought,"Zelensky said. "However,...

PARIS: French President Emmanuel Macron on Saturday ruled out bringing back mandatory military service but said he wanted to mobilize society in the face of Russian aggression and would make an announcement in the coming weeks. Speaking to regional newspapers in comments recorded Friday and published Saturday, Macron said the return of compulsory military service was “not a realistic option.” He said France no longer had the “logistics” to reintroduce conscription, which ended in 2001. “We are going to look at ways to mobilize civilians,” Macron told the regional press, adding that he wanted to consolidate the “mobilization of society...

MOSCOW, July 23 (Reuters) - Residents of Moscow who sign up to fight in Ukraine will receive a down payment of 1.9 million roubles ($21,777) from the city, taking their annual pay in their first service year to 5.2 million roubles ($59,600), the mayor's office said on Tuesday. Total pay will include the downpayment, wages from the defence ministry, as well as regional and federal handouts, the office of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said in a statement. The new payments will enter into force immediately, it said. The increase means that annual pay for Russian contract soldiers from Moscow will...

Three armed men opened fire inside a concert hall in the Moscow area, according to Russian state media agencies TASS and RIA Novosti. There are believed to be dead and wounded, Russian state media reported, without specifying any numbers. “People in camouflage, at least three, burst into the ground floor of the Crocus City Hall and opened fire with automatic weapons,” RIA Novosti reported Friday, citing its correspondent on the scene. RIA Novosti said the three men “threw a grenade or an incendiary bomb, which started a fire” in the concert hall.

Terrorist attack in Russia, Several gunmen fired shots at a concert hall in Moscow on Friday

“Zaluzhny vs. Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) The Verkhovna Rada does not adopt a new law on mobilization. -Who should I fight with? Either turn to the world and ask people there, or go fight if you don’t provide. I need people, the Russians have already called up 400 thousand. Give me people, demands Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny Zaluzhny is outraged by the complete lack of a mobilization reserve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Now there is an acute shortage of personnel in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The military has to appeal to the...

About 10,000 people living in the United States have reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices, part of a larger mobilization of 360,000 troops, Israeli officials told The Washington Post. At least eight U.S. citizens have been killed while serving in Israeli security forces since the war began, according to the State Department. The rush of U.S. citizens willing to take up arms for Israel resembles, in ways, the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, whose government appealed to Americans and other foreign nationals to help repel the incursion now nearing the start of its third...

14 months after the start of mobilization Russian women start protesting demanding their men come back alive, that they be rotated regularly, etc. Mothers and wives of the mobilized labeled foreign organization, not permitted to protest, but they keep finding ways.

Russia's top security official today warned of biological warfare and ordered regional governors to put their economies on a war footing. Security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev, 72, is seen by some as Vladimir Putin’s likely successor. A strong anti-Western hardliner, he claimed that the conflict in Ukraine could see biological warfare while also suggesting a new round of mobilisation in Russia after heavy losses of conscripts. -snip- “Unauthorised access to collections of dangerous pathogens, destruction and looting of laboratory premises, as well as loss of biological samples, cannot be ruled out….” He warned of Ukraine infecting refugees who travel from...

"A serious obstacle to achieving technological independence is the shortage of qualified scientific, engineering and labor personnel. The total number of personnel engaged in research and development in Russia has decreased by a quarter over the past 20 years," Patrushev said at a retreat in the city of Tomsk, in Siberia, Russia. A large number of scientists and academic staff are believed to have fled the country after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and again after he announced a partial mobilization of the population last fall. Hundreds of thousands of Russians fled...

After the failure of the much-hyped Summer offensive of the Ukrainian forces, with as much as 70k human losses in a little over 3 months, Kiev has ramped up dramatically the efforts to forcibly conscript every able-bodied male – and some not so able – and are starting with Medical Women, too.At the same time, Kiev tries to cripple the many gangs that are selling a most valuable service, righht now: help to evade mobilization. (snip)“The people’s forces where you bring in children 15, 16 years old, you’re bringing in old people in their sixties, you’re bringing in the infirm...

new intel from John Moore raises alarm over Pentagon's war plans

Russia is ready to introduce electronic military draft papers for the first time in its history in an effort to make it harder for men to avoid being drafted after the lower house of parliament gave its backing to the move. The State Duma, the lower chamber, gave its backing to the necessary legislation in two separate votes. Some lawmakers complained the changes were being rushed through without giving them enough time to scrutinise the changes. -snip- NO SECOND MOBILISATION Peskov dismissed suggestions that the digitalisation plans might spark a further wave of panic and emigration among young male Russians...

Putin’s partial mobilization continues to look like a disaster. There are reports that some of the new recruits are being sent to the front lines in Ukraine with little or no training or equipment. Mobilized soldiers and their families provide their own equipment and even medical supplies before they ship out.A half-dozen Russian soldiers talk about being shipped to an area of intense fighting in eastern Ukraine just 11 days after their mobilization. Asked about his shooting practice, a bearded conscript says, “Once. Three magazines.”…Elsewhere, scores of relatives of freshly drafted Russian soldiers crowd outside a training center, passing items...

Some Chinese nationals still in Ukraine have signed up for evacuation from the country, with most registering for organized evacuations, while others are preparing to leave Ukraine on their own, the Global Times learned on Sunday, after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Chinese citizens to leave Ukraine, citing the grave security situation. The move, following the large-scale evacuation in March that safely returned some 6,000 Chinese nationals in Ukraine back to their motherland, represents the Chinese government's greatest efforts to protect its citizens, as the Russia-Ukraine conflict further escalated, experts noted. As of press time on Sunday, 161 people had...

Russian lawmakers have proposed a bill that would allow the granting of amnesties to prisoners enlisting to fight in Ukraine, according to Senator Olga Kovitidi on Thursday. "If a convict shows courage and heroism while performing military duty … the court may release him from serving his sentence … or commute the remainder of the sentence to a milder one,” Kovitidi said in a post on Telegram. According to Kovitidi, the measures wouldn’t apply to those convicted of such recently-legislated crimes as "discrediting" or "spreading false information about" Russia’s armed forces, or for calling for sanctions against the country. People...

Translated from Russian via Google Translate:The Russian-Ukrainian war once again demonstrated that, despite new-fashioned concepts and modern weapons, the old military truths are still true. In particular, the size of the army remains important. This truth should be understood correctly. This does not mean that whoever has more army won - it would be too easy. This means that to perform a task you need to have enough quantity for such a task, not just quality. Marshal Jacques d'Etamp' saying "God is always on the side of large battalions" does not cancel the proverb "Hope in God, but don't do...

Russian authorities are mobilizing men from the country’s most vulnerable groups to send to the front in Ukraine, the independent Mediazona news website reported Tuesday. In Moscow, security officers have taken men to military enlistment centers from charity centers for the homeless and needy as well as hostels where labor migrants live, Mediazona reported. The Food Not Bombs group, which hands out food to Moscow’s homeless community, told Mediazona that it has seen dozens of homeless men taken off the street and brought to military enlistment offices in the weeks since President Vladimir Putin declared a “partial” mobilization. “The police...

In the seven months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the other former Soviet states have been adhering to a set of unwritten rules. Moscow realized that putting excessive pressure on its neighbors could destabilize the region, and therefore refrained from making too many demands of them. They were not required, for example, to recognize the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, or express support for the “special operation”: it was enough to remain neutral. The main condition was to not supply Ukraine with weapons and ammunition (Kazakhstan suspended all of its weapons exports, just to be on the safe side)....

Recently mobilized Russian soldiers are decrying "inhumane" conditions, weapons shortages and mistreatment by officers, according to video published by the independent news website The Insider on Wednesday. Footage of new recruits sleeping on the floor, being armed with outdated rifles and ordered to source their own supplies appeared almost immediately after President Vladimir Putin announced a “partial” mobilization last month. Around 500 troops gathered in western Russia’s Belgorod region near the Ukrainian border with no training and no knowledge of where they were being deployed, the latest video’s authors said. “Nobody needs us,” a voice behind the camera, flanked by...