World

Russia Begins Staged Referendums In Occupied Areas of Ukraine


He and other top officials have also suggested that Russia could use nuclear weapons in the conflict, especially after its annexation of Ukrainian territory, when the country calls any enemy action a an attack on Russian soil. “This is not a hoax,” Putin said in his address to the nation on Wednesday.

However, in an interview on Friday, Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, insisted that the threat was meaningless. “If you really want to use a weapon, you do it and you don’t talk about it over and over again,” he said.

The Kremlin insists that only men with military experience and special skills are called up, but anecdotal reports suggest that is not the case and some have passed the usual enlistment age. years – even decades. It is also clear that the ban is more concentrated in poorer, remote areas, including ethnic minorities, than in the large western cities, where Russia’s elites are located.

The call has sparked protests in many cities, with some protesters being handed draft notices in retaliation. It has also spurred some men to qualify for the draft book flight tickets abroad; It is unclear why the government allowed them to leave, or what efforts they made to stop them.

On Friday, the Kremlin announced a new draft exemption, ostensibly in response to complaints from big businesses that they risk losing key workers. The Defense Department said those with certain jobs in the banking, information technology and telecommunications sectors would be exempt. Organizations representing software developers and air traffic controllers have asked for an exemption from their members.

Report contributed by Valerie Hopkins in Berlin, Maria Varennikova and Anna Lukinova in Kyiv, Ukraine, Nick Cumming-Bruce in Geneva, Dan Bilefsky in Montreal, Cora Engelbrecht in London, Ivan Nechepurenko in Tbilisi, Georgia, Jim Tankersley in Washington, and Anton Troianovski and Richard Pérez-Peña in New York.



Source link

news7f

News7F: Update the world's latest breaking news online of the day, breaking news, politics, society today, international mainstream news .Updated news 24/7: Entertainment, Sports...at the World everyday world. Hot news, images, video clips that are updated quickly and reliably

Related Articles

Back to top button