wow
islam says it is just fine
mohammad says so
guess it's easier than catching unwilling men on the streets…
Zelensky approves military enlistment of convicts
The new measure is aimed at helping Kiev replenish its depleted ranks
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky ratified a new law on Friday which would allow some prisoners to be paroled if they agree to enlist in the country’s military, according to documents published on the official website of the country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.
The bill was first submitted to the legislature in March this year as part of Ukraine’s efforts to replenish its ranks amid a series of setbacks in its conflict with Russia.
The new legislation permits Ukrainian inmates to voluntarily enlist on a contractual basis and serve for as long as the country remains under martial law. The law only applies to convicts who have no more than three years left of their original prison sentence. It does not extend to people who have been convicted of premeditated murder, rape, drug trafficking and production, crimes against national security or corruption. However, the law allows military service for those convicted of involuntary manslaughter, with the exception of cases where the prisoner committed the crime while intoxicated.
Ukrainian Justice Minister Denis Maliuska said earlier that the mobilized convicts will serve in special units, and could perform tasks not related to actual combat or the handling weapons, such as building infrastructure and other fieldwork. He also noted that the new law could help Kiev bolster its number of troops by as many as 20,000.
An April survey conducted by the ministry showed that some 4,500 Ukrainian convicts had already expressed a desire to serve in the army in exchange for parole, Olena Vysotska, Maliuska’s deputy, told Glavkom news outlet this week.
The new move is part of a broader initiative by Kiev to address critical shortages of manpower on the front line. Last month, Zelensky signed a new mobilization law which lowered the conscription age from 27 to 25, expanded the powers of enlistment officers and introduced penalties for draft dodgers, including fines of up to 25,000 hryvnias ($640).
The government in Kiev previously insisted that only 31,000 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the conflict since it began in February 2022. However, earlier this month, then-Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu claimed that Ukrainian military casualties this year alone have amounted to more than 111,000 soldiers.
https://www.rt.com/russia/597824-ukraine-law-mobilization-prisoners/
Zelensky blasts West for wanting conflict to end
The US and its allies are afraid of Moscow losing the war, the Ukrainian leader has said
Ukraine’s president has claimed Kiev’s forces would be more successful on the battlefield if they were not banned from using Western-supplied weapons to hit targets in Russia.
Russia’s ability to strike Ukraine from its own soil is giving Moscow the edge in the conflict, Vladimir Zelensky said during an interview with AFP news agency on Friday.
"They can fire any weapons from their territory at ours. This is the biggest advantage that Russia has. We can’t do anything to their systems, which are located on the territory of Russia, with Western weapons,” he explained.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who visited Kiev earlier this week, said Washington has “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war.”
However, on Thursday Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh clarified that Washington’s position that Kiev should not target Russia with US-supplied weapons remains unchanged. Such arms can only be used to “take back Ukrainian sovereign territory,” Singh stressed.
Earlier this month, UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron insisted Ukraine has the “right” to use UK-supplied weapons to strike targets deep inside Russia, if it decides to do so. Moscow reacted to the statement by warning that if such an attack were to take place it could target British military facilities “on the territory of Ukraine and beyond” in response.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kiev has urged Washington to provide intelligence on targets on Russian soil amid setbacks in Donbass and Kharkov Region. According to the NYT, US officials are currently reviewing those requests, despite previously turning them down.
Zelensky said Kiev now finds itself in a “nonsensical situation” due to the stance of the West, which “is afraid that Russia will lose the war. And it does not want Ukraine to lose it.”
“Ukraine’s final victory will lead to Russia’s defeat. And the final victory of Russia will lead to Ukraine’s defeat,” he added.
The Ukrainian authorities “want the war to end with a fair peace for us. Of course, the West wants the war to end. Period. As soon as possible. And, for them, this is a fair peace,” the president stated.
On Friday, Russia President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow “never rejected negotiations unlike the Ukrainian side,” referring to a 2022 decree by Zelensky, which officially forbade him from talks with his Russian counterpart.
https://www.rt.com/news/597817-zelensky-ukraine-us-weapons/