Translated material
Mercenaries, get away!
Ukraine and Belarus have different views on the fact that their citizens will be able to serve in the Russian army
The decision of the Russian government to accept CIS citizens for contracts caused strong reactions from our Slavic neighbors.An employee of the Ukrainian prosecutor's office, Yuriy Boychenko, quoted the Criminal Code. According to him, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has the right to initiate criminal cases in the case of “recruitment, financing, material support, training of mercenaries for the purpose of use in armed conflicts of other states or violent actions aimed at overthrowing state power or violating territorial integrity, as well as the use of mercenaries in military conflicts or actions." Violation of this article carries a criminal penalty of 3 to 8 years. And for “participation without the permission of the relevant government authorities in armed conflicts of other states for the purpose of obtaining material reward” the penalty is from 5 to 10 years. These articles will not apply to citizens of Ukraine only if the Verkhovna Rada makes an appropriate decision regarding international cooperation in the field of defense, added Yuriy Boychenko.
Grigory Omelchenko, head of the Union of Officers and people's deputy of Ukraine from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, said that the Rada would not accept such a decision. “How would Russian politicians react,” Mr. Omelchenko asked, “if the American Senate or the German Bundestag invited Russian military personnel to serve in their armies and provided the possibility of obtaining citizenship in the future?”
But in Belarus they reacted to the news much more calmly. The head of the press service of the Ministry of Defense of Belarus, Colonel Leonid Zakharenko, said that this decision of the Russian government will allow those CIS citizens who permanently reside on Russian territory but do not yet have citizenship to be drafted into the Russian army.
The head of the personnel department of the defense ministry of Belarus, Yuri Merentsov, believes that not a single law in the country says anything about whether Belarusian citizens are allowed or prohibited from enlisting in a foreign, including Russian, army.
At the same time, Moscow foresaw that the reaction in the capitals of the Commonwealth would be nervous. “Of course, they will all scream,” a senior Defense Ministry official told the Vremya Novostey newspaper, “but that’s their problem.”