Russia has exempted itself from partial deployment to fight officials in Ukraine with “higher education” in the fields of information technology, telecommunications and the financial system, Russia’s defense ministry said Friday.
“In order to ensure the functioning of certain high-tech industries and the financial system of the Russian Federation, it has been decided not to employ (…) citizens with higher education in the relevant specialties and areas of training”the ministry said in a full statement from the official Russian agency TASS.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of 300,000 Russians on Wednesday to continue the war in Ukraine, which Russia began on February 24 this year.
In addition to telecommunications, the exemption measure includes in particular the staff of “organizations ensuring the stability of the national payment system and financial market infrastructure, management of bank liquidity and money circulation”.
The exemption also applies to senior media executives.
“The lists of civilians presented to the General Staff of the Armed Forces in the prescribed manner by the heads of the relevant organizations will be considered the basis for the exemption from the involvement of civilians in the military service for mobilization,” it said. the ministry headed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. by Serguei Shoigu.
The partial mobilization ordered by Putin to face military setbacks in Ukraine sparked a wave of protests in major Russian cities, resulting in more than 1,300 prisoners.
Another protest was called for Saturday.
After Putin’s announcement, several media outlets reported that thousands of people were trying to leave Russia to escape the mobilization.
On Thursday, Kremlin (Russian Presidency) spokesman Dmitri Peskov had to defend his son Nikolai, who was accused of refusing to be deployed to Ukraine.
The accusation came after a “blogger” named Nikolai Peskov impersonated an army member calling in the reservists mobilized in connection with Putin’s announcement.
In a video that went viral on social media, the son of the Kremlin spokesman said he would not report to the designated recruiting center and resolve the matter “on another level.”
“I have no problem defending the motherland. But first I need to understand what is viable for me,” he justified in the video released by the YouTube channel “People’s Politics”, made by supporters of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who stuck .
The war in Ukraine, which began seven months ago, has resulted in an undetermined number of civilian and military casualties.
Russia admitted the loss of about 6,000 troops this week, but Western experts say those numbers are low.
The United States estimates that Russia lost 15,000 troops in the first six months of the war, and the Ukrainians admitted that about 10,000 of their troops were killed in the same period.
The UN has confirmed the deaths of about 6,000 civilians as of September 19.
The war also forced an additional 13 million people to flee their homes, nearly 6.7 million of whom sought refuge in various countries, mainly in Europe.
The rest remained in Ukraine and were classified as internally displaced people, that is, people who were forced to leave their usual place of residence, but who did not flee to another country.
Source: DN
