Military enlistment officers. Photo: Suspilne
Ukraine discusses major reform of military enlistment offices amid criticism of current system – UP
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence is proposing to transform military enlistment offices into Reserve+ Offices with digital services and a new organisational structure.
Ukrainska Pravda
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The team at Ukraine's Ministry of Defence is proposing to transform military enlistment offices in their current form into so-called Reserve+ Offices with separate recruitment and support divisions.
Details: According to Ukrainska Pravda's sources in parliament, recruitment office staff would handle the registration of persons liable for military service, the planning of mobilisation measures, recruitment and enlistment.
Additional recruitment centres are also planned in public places.
Separate backup hubs would be created as facilities for accommodating volunteers and conscripts brought in by police during the enlistment process.
Under the Defence Ministry's proposal, staff at these hubs would be responsible for document checks, medical examinations, assessments of psychological resilience and professional suitability.
Meanwhile, specialist personnel in the support offices would deal with social issues – from processing compensation for wounded soldiers and one-off payments to the families of fallen service members to organising funerals.
The ministry intends to digitalise some of these functions, including the processing of payments and issuing of certificates.
Quote from a source in the military leadership: "The enlistment offices are a huge structure that provides the military with more than 30,000 mobilised personnel and contract soldiers every month. No one wants to break the system, so there is a lot of discussion. There was a lengthy debate over who should bring men from the streets to enlistment centres. The Defence Ministry proposed that this should be done exclusively by police officers, without military personnel involved. But the police are against it. Right now, everything has stalled – there is no consensus."
Details: Under current legislation, only police officers are authorised to detain and bring persons liable for military service to enlistment centres. The Defence Ministry is therefore not proposing anything fundamentally new in this regard.
There are currently no deadlines for when the reform of the current system will begin. Representatives from the Defence Ministry, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Office of the President are still refining their proposals.
On an important note, these proposals have not yet been included in any draft laws or government resolutions. They represent the latest working concepts developed by the Defence Ministry, the General Staff and the Office of the President. However, changes are being made to the drafts almost daily, meaning some ideas may never appear in the final documents.
Background: In one of his recent interviews, Ivan Vyhivskyi, Head of the National Police of Ukraine, stressed that police officers "should not be left to their own devices" in the mobilisation process, as even their involvement in it "has a very negative impact on the image of the National Police".
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