Russia refuses to blacklist Hamas as terrorist
“Occupation is in itself a form of terrorism”
Palestine Information Center – December 31, 2015
MOSCOW – Russia and the United States agree that Daesh, al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra are terrorist organizations but differ over blacklisting Hezbollah and Hamas, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Speaking to the Interfax news agency on Tuesday night, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said: “Our opinions coincide as regards to the main terrorist organizations. These are ISIS, al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra.”
But “we are not even discussing Hezbollah and Hamas with the Americans,” he added.
Moscow has routinely held senior-level contacts with Hamas officials and leaders.
Commenting on the Russian position, political analyst Abdul Sattar Qassem said: “Hamas cannot be compared to Daesh or al-Qaeda. It can only be viewed in terms of its resistance to the Israeli occupation.”
“The Israeli occupation and the USA are the real terrorists. They are fighting all those who stand in their way,” he added.
“Blacklisting Hamas as terrorist is unacceptable for Moscow. There is no evidence to corroborate the fact that Hamas is a terror group,” he said.
“Israel has been misleading the world into believing that Hamas is targeting Israeli civilians, which is not in fact the case,” the analyst stated.
“Hamas is a movement of national liberation that defends its people. It does not seek to wage wars for the sake of wars. It is engaged in a fight against an entity that colonized its motherland,” he explained.
However, “does Russia dare blacklist Israel as a terrorist entity for the crimes it has perpetrated against the Palestinians?” Qassem wondered. “It is not enough that Russia refuses to dub Hamas a terror group. It should dare include Israel on its terror list.”
“There is no colonizing power in the world but Israel. Occupation is in itself a form of terrorism,” the analyst further stated.
Coroner: Israel’s conditional release of bodies prevents autopsies
Ma’an – December 31, 2015
BETHLEHEM – A Palestinian coroner responsible for performing autopsies on the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces condemned on Thursday Israel’s conditional handover of bodies.
Head of Al-Quds University’s Institute for Forensic Medicine, Sabir al-Aloul, told Ma’an that the demand by Israeli authorities that Palestinian bodies be buried immediately after their return prevents autopsies from being carried out.
“Israel freezes the bodies of the Palestinian martyrs in mortuaries held at -35 degrees which prevents autopsy for 24 to 48 hours,” al-Aloul said.
The burial of the body of 38-year-old Baseem Salah — delivered on Tuesday — was reportedly delayed after coroners were unable to immediately autopsy his body, still frozen after the handover.
The Palestinian Ministry of Justice adopted a resolution to perform autopsies on the bodies of all Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in effort to document “Israeli crimes,” al-Aloul added.
Israeli authorities began holding the bodies of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks on Israeli military or civilians in October. The practice has not been used with such frequency since the Second Intifada, according to rights group Hamoked.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Nov. 5 that bodies would begin to be returned on a “case-by-case basis, where the main consideration is if there`ll be a massive funeral.”
Several bodies have been handed over since.
A number of Palestinian families on Wednesday refused in a letter the conditions proposed by Israel for the return of their relatives. One of several complaints issued by the signatories was that families should be allotted time to request an official autopsy on their dead.
Autopsy reports are used in official paperwork necessary to file cases against Israeli authorities at the International Criminal Court.
“The freezing prevents autopsy results that document the crime, which means a loss of important information for bringing Israel in front of the International Criminal Court,” al-Aloul told Ma’an.
A spokesperson for Israel’s Ministry of Defense was not immediately available for comment regarding the return of frozen bodies.
Al-Aloul said that Israeli conditions also prevented autopsies that would resolve accusations that Israel has been “stealing” organs from the bodies of Palestinians withheld by the state.
Palestinian delegate to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, on Nov. 3 wrote a letter to the president of the UN Security council that included an accusation of organ harvesting by Israel.
The delegate referred to reports that the body of Muhannad Okbi — killed after reportedly killing an Israeli soldier in a Beersheba bus station — was returned to his family without corneas.
The allegations have yet to be confirmed.
According to autopsies al-Aloul had performed on Palestinians killed since Oct. 1 so far, the coroner said that those killed were “shot in the head and the chest many times from a very close distance.”
Some bodies also showed the use of expanding bullets — also known as “dum dum” bullets — the use of which is illegal under international law.
Israel has repeatedly denied claims that its forces use such bullets, though Palestinian medical examiners have on occasion documented their use.
The coroner also reported that a number of the bodies appeared to be returned in poor condition.
British MPs tout NATO’s ‘Kosovo success story’ as reason to bomb Syria
By Dan Glazebrook | RT | December 31, 2015
Kosovo is often cited by liberal interventionists as NATO’s success story and now a reason for attacking Syria. However, the ongoing lawlessness in the country shows nothing could be further from the truth.
In 1999, NATO bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the Serbian province of Kosovo. Tens of thousands were killed or maimed by the airstrikes, and Kosovo was carved out as a NATO statelet under the control of UNMIK (the United Nations Mission in Kosovo) in alliance with its local quislings the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA).
Last month’s parliamentary debate on British airstrikes in Syria witnessed several MPs citing the operation as a great success. Labour MP Ivan Lewis was “proud of the difficult choices that we made” in Kosovo and elsewhere, which he claimed “saved hundreds of thousands of lives”.
Kosovo was particularly held up by those supporting British military action in Syria as an example of how airstrikes alone, without support from ground forces, can be victorious. Mocking those who argued that “coalition action which rests almost wholly on bombing… will have little effect”, Margaret Beckett responded “well, tell that to the Kosovans, and do not forget that if there had not been any bombing in Kosovo perhaps 1 million Albanian Muslim refugees would be seeking refuge in Europe.”
Conservative MP Richard Benyon concurred, adding: “I asked one my constituents––someone who knows a bit about this, General Sir Mike Jackson––whether he could remember any conflict where air power alone made a difference. He thought and said one word: Kosovo.”
The argument is entirely fallacious. One obvious difference between the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 and the British bombing of Syria today is the contrast in their stated aims. NATO was ostensibly bombing Yugoslavia to achieve a limited goal – the secession of Kosovo. In Syria today, however, the ostensible aim of airstrikes against ISIS is the destruction of ISIS. In other words, while the first aimed to force a concession from the force it was targeting; the other apparently aims at the total elimination of its target. While enough punishment might persuade someone to concede a demand, it will not persuade anyone to agree to their own eradication. There is, thus, no parallel in the logic behind the two campaigns, and anyone trying to draw one is being entirely disingenuous.
Secondly, when the actual historical record is examined it becomes clear that, even on its own terms, NATO did not actually achieve its demands. The Rambouillet ‘agreement’ was NATO’s eleventh hour diktat to Yugoslavia on the eve of bombing, designed to be rejected in order to justify the bombing raids. The key bone of contention for Yugoslavia in this document was that it demanded NATO troops be granted full access to air fields, roads, ports and railroads across the country – that is to say, an effective NATO occupation of the entire federal republic.
Obviously, as Sara Flounders and John Catalinotto of the International Action Centre have written, “no self-respecting government could accept such an ultimatum”. Instead, the Yugoslav government offered to withdraw their troops from Kosovo. This was rejected by NATO, who began bombing within days. After nearly three months of heroic resistance from the Yugoslav people, the bombing ended with Yugoslav troops withdrawing from Kosovo – without any NATO occupation of the rest of the country. That is to say, the war was brought to a close on the terms originally offered by the Yugoslavs, and not on the terms demanded by NATO at the outset: hardly the overwhelming victory claimed by the likes of British General Mike Jackson.
What really gives the lie to the ‘Kosovo success’ narrative, however, is simply the condition of NATO’s statelet today. An in-depth piece by Vedat Xhymshiti in Foreign Policy Journal last month notes that “Kosovo is the poorest and most isolated country in Europe, with millionaire politicians steeped in crime. A third of the workforce is unemployed, and corruption is widespread. Youth unemployment (those aged 25 and under) stands at 2 in 3, and nearly half of the 1.8 million citizens of Kosovo are considered to be in poverty. From December 2014 until February 2015, about 5% of the population was forced to leave the country in an effort to find a better life, studies and more dignified jobs, on their uncertain path towards wealthier countries in the EU.”
The British MPs’ argument that NATO’s takeover of Kosovo was achieved by airstrikes alone, without ground forces, is a lie. NATO’s allies in 1999 were the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), a violent sectarian group who openly sought the establishment of an ethnically supremacist state – much like the forces supported by NATO in Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Once NATO had destroyed the Yugoslav administration in Kosovo, effective power on the ground passed to the KLA, who set about implementing their vision of an ethnically pure Kosovo via a series of pogroms, massacres and persecutions of the province’s Serb, Jewish and Roma populations. They gained effective control of Kosovan politics, and used this power to guarantee themselves impunity both for their historic and ongoing war crimes, and for their massive expansion of organized criminality.
In December 2010, a Council of Europe report named Kosovan Prime Minister and former KLA leader Hashim Thaci “the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe”, according the Guardian newspaper’s summary. Following NATO’s intervention, Thaci’s Drenica group within the KLA, according to the report, seized control of “most of the illicit criminal enterprises” in which Kosovans were involved in Albania. The report noted that “agencies dedicated to combating drug smuggling in at least five countries have named Hashim Thaçi and other members of his Drenica group as having exerted violent control over the trade in heroin and other narcotics.” The human rights investigator who authored the report, Dick Marty, commented that: “Thaçi and these other Drenica group members are consistently named as ‘key players’ in intelligence reports on Kosovo’s mafia-like structures of organised crime.”
In addition to their leading role in Europe’s heroin smuggling trade, Thaci and his group were also named as having been responsible for a professional organ smuggling operation involving the kidnapping and murder of Serb civilians in order to harvest and sell their kidneys. Currently serving as both Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Thaci’s NATO protection guarantees he has never been brought to justice for any of these crimes.
Indeed, NATO-sponsored impunity has been a consistent theme amongst the new Kosovan elite. A report by Amnesty International published in August 2013 noted that “the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) singularly failed to investigate the abduction and murders of Kosovo Serbs in the aftermath of the 1998-1999 conflict” adding that “UNMIK’s failure to investigate what constituted a widespread, as well as a systematic, attack on a civilian population and, potentially, crimes against humanity, has contributed to the climate of impunity prevailing in Kosovo.” Marty’s report, too, noted the “faltering political will on the part of the international community to effectively prosecute the former leaders of the KLA”, and Carla del Ponte, former chief war crimes prosecutor at the Hague, stated that she was barred from prosecuting KLA leaders.
UNMIK’s responsibilities for police and justice came to an end in December 2008, following Kosovo’s controversial declaration of independence. It was replaced by the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo (EULEX), which, according to Amnesty International, inherited 1,187 war crimes cases that UNMIK had failed to investigate. All the signs are that the overt impunity that has prevailed up until now will be replaced by lip service to the rule of law, accompanied by the prosecution of a few low level operatives, whilst maintaining the protection for those at the top. Following the Council of Europe’s damning report, EULEX spent three years investigating the claims, eventually publishing a verdict that was a textbook case of damage-limitation whitewash. EULEX concluded that the crimes were indeed real, and were linked to leading KLA members, but refused to corroborate the names of any specific individuals involved, despite copious evidence. Thaci’s protection, it seems, is absolute.
Nevertheless, in August of this year, the Kosovan parliament finally and grudgingly approved (after initially rejecting) the establishment of a special war crimes court to prosecute KLA leaders for crimes committed between 1998 and 2000. In moves highly reminiscent of scenes outside both the Libyan and Ukrainian parliaments when tentative and tokenistic legal moves were made to end the impunity of the sectarian death squads, the parliament has come under repeated attack ever since. Riots and six separate teargas attacks by the opposition have brought the normal functioning of the Kosovan parliament to a standstill. Failed state status surely beckons.
Meanwhile, the credibility of EULEX, whose officials will be overseeing the establishment of the new court, was further thrown into doubt in November 2014 when Andrea Capussela, former head of UNMIK’s economic unit, released the results of an in-depth analysis of the most significant cases in which EULEX had been involved. Seven of these she claimed had only been brought after intense international pressure, whilst in a further eight, no investigation was carried out at all, despite “credible and well-documented evidence strongly suggesting that serious crimes had been committed.”
She noted that “Eulex’s conduct in these 15 cases – the eight ignored ones and the seven opened under pressure – suggests that the mission tended not to prosecute high-level crime, and, when it had to, it sought not to indict or convict prominent figures”. During its six years of operating, she noted, only four convictions had been secured – three of them against only secondary figures, whilst “higher-ranking figures linked to the same crimes were either not investigated or indicted”. A senior Kosovan investigator noted that “There are people killing people and getting away with it because of Unmik and Eulex,” adding that “The political elite and Eulex have fused. They are indivisible. The laws are just for poor people,” Indeed, Eulex seems to be operating increasingly like a mafia themselves, last year, putting “pressure”, according to Amnesty International, on “journalist, Vehbi Kajtazi, who had reported alleged corruption in EULEX”.
In a final twist to NATO’s ‘success story’, Kosovo has now become the largest per-capita provider of fighters for regime change in Syria. The official figure is 300 but more reliable estimates suggests the true figure is more than 1000 (from a population of 2 million), including one of the top ten ISIS commanders, Lavdrim Muhaxheri. As state education, along with most other social provision, has collapsed since 1999, Saudi-sponsored Madrasas have filled the gap, providing an extreme Wahhabi sectarian education now feeding its first generation of impoverished graduates into NATO’s new Syrian battlefields. No surprise, then, that Kosovan government’s efforts to prevent this have been “superficial and ineffective”, according to David Philips in the Huffington Post.
The ‘lesson’ of Kosovo, then, is not that “airpower works” or any other such nonsense. The real lesson is what it reveals about NATO’s formula for the destruction of independent regional powers – relying on a combination of aerial bombardment alongside the empowerment of local sectarian death squads, who come to dominate the political scene in the aftermath, obliterating the rule of law and guaranteeing a dysfunctional state incapable of providing either dignity or security to its citizens. This was the same formula that was used on Libya in 2011 and currently being attempted in Syria today. Of course, for NATO, all of this is indeed a success: Yugoslavia dismembered; its resources plundered at the expense of its desperate and impoverished people; and Kosovo turned into a provider of shock troops for regime change in Syria, and transit hub for heroin and organ trafficking. If this is what NATO calls a success, we must all pray for failure.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
US preparing new sanctions over Iran’s missile program
Press TV – December 31, 2015
US President Barack Obama’s administration is reportedly preparing fresh sanctions on international companies and individuals over Iran’s missile program.
They would be the first financial sanctions on Iran since Tehran agreed to a landmark nuclear agreement in July and present a serious challenge to the accord’s implementation.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the sanctions would target a number of Iranian nationals and international companies over suspected involvement in Iran’s missile program.
“We’ve been looking for some time at options for additional actions related to Iran’s ballistic missile program based on our continued concerns about its activities,” an Obama administration official was quoted as saying.
“We are considering various aspects related to additional designations, as well as evolving diplomatic work that is consistent with our national security interests,” the official said, on condition of anonymity.
US officials claim the new sanctions are in line with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement, and the Treasury Department can impose new sanctions on Iran over its missile development.
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all matters of the state, has made it clear that Iran would consider any new sanctions a breach of the JCPOA.
In an October letter to President Hassan Rouhani, outlining his conditional approval of the JCPOA, the Leader said that in case of a violation, “the government would be obliged to take necessary measures and halt JCPOA activities.”
“Imposing any sanctions at any level and under any pretext by any side of the negotiations will be considered a breach of the JCPOA,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in his letter.
Iran has also defended its right to carry out missile tests for defensive purposes, saying none of his country’s missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
“It’s our legitimate defense. These are not missiles that are designed to be capable of carrying nuclear warheads and, therefore, it is within our right to self-defense,” said Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in an interview published by The New Yorker earlier this month.
According to the Journal, the sanctions would prohibit US or foreign nationals from conducting business with targeted companies.
US banks would also be required to freeze any assets the companies or individuals hold inside the American financial system.
Tehran is already disappointed by Obama’s signing of a Congress bill this month aimed at limiting travels to Iran and trade with the country.
Iran says the law violates a July nuclear accord and amounts to new sanctions on the country.
The US Supreme Court is also mulling a case on appropriating $2 billion of Iranian assets frozen in a bank in New York.
The Obama administration has urged the tribunal not to overturn the decisions of US circuit and appeals courts to use the funds.
Iran warns US against sanctions over missile program
Press TV – December 31, 2015
Iran has warned the US against imposing any fresh sanctions on international companies and individuals over the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program, saying Tehran will respond to such meddlesome measures.
“Such measures are unilateral, arbitrary and illegal and the Islamic Republic of Iran has [already] served notice to the US government [in this regard],” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said on Thursday.
Jaberi Ansari was reacting to reports that the US government is planning new sanctions targeting about 12 companies and individuals in Iran, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates for their alleged involvement in Iran’s missile program.
“The Islamic Republic will respond to any meddlesome action against its defense program by strengthening its defense might,” he said.
The planned sanctions, reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, come as the US prepares to lift restrictions on Iran over its nuclear program within the framework of Iran’s July nuclear agreement with the P5+1 group of countries, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Jaberi Ansari reiterated that Iran’s missile program is solely for defense purposes and in line with national security interests.
“No measure can deny the Islamic Republic of Iran its legitimate and legal rights to boost its defense might and national security,” he said.
Iran has already said that any fresh sanctions on the country would be a flagrant violation of the JCPOA, whose implementation is expected in January.
Iran denies firing rockets near US aircraft carrier in Gulf, brands claim ‘psychological warfare’
RT | December 31, 2015
Tehran has officially denied that its Revolutionary Guards’ patrol vessel launched rockets in imminent proximity to the USS Harry S. Truman and its convoy entering the Persian Gulf, calling the allegation an act of “psychological warfare.”
On Tuesday, reports emerged that last Saturday the US aircraft carrier was intimidated after missiles were launched by an Iranian patrol vessel on a parallel course with the American naval convoy.
“The naval forces of the Guards have not had any exercises in the Strait of Hormuz during the past week and the period claimed by the Americans, for them to have launched missiles and rockets,” Reuters quoted Revolutionary Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif as saying.
The alleged dangerous missile launch was reported by NBC News, which cited two unnamed US military officials as saying that the USS Harry S. Truman was about 1,400 meters away from the Iranian vessels, which launched two missiles as part of naval exercises.
“The publication of such false news under the present circumstances is akin to psychological warfare,” Sharif said.
Turkey rejects Iraq’s warning against Ankara troop deployment
Press TV – December 31, 2015
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has dismissed Baghdad’s warning of military action to defend Iraqi sovereignty if Ankara does not pull its troops out of northern Iraq.
“If Baghdad wants to use force, they should use it against Daesh, get rid of Daesh from Mousul. If they do so… why we would risk our army, we would withdraw to our country,” Davutoglu said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster NTV.
He made the remarks in response to Iraqi Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who called on Turkey Wednesday to withdraw its troops or risk the use of military action.
Baghdad and Ankara are locked in a war of words over the presence of Turkish troops in northern Iraq.
On December 4, Turkey deployed some 150 soldiers, equipped with heavy weapons and backed by 20 to 25 tanks, to the outskirts of Mosul, the capital of Iraq’s Nineveh Province.
Ankara claimed the deployment was part of a mission to train and equip Iraq’s Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the fight against Daesh.
Baghdad has strongly condemned the presence of the Turkish battalion on the Iraqi territory, branding the uncoordinated act as a violation of Iraq’s national sovereignty.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Davutoglu claimed that Turkish troops were in northern Iraq in a bid to prevent terrorist infiltration into Turkey.
“I wish Iraq can control this area (northern parts) so that we don’t need to launch air operations there to prevent the leak of terrorists into Turkey.”
On Wednesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi held a phone conversation with Davutoglu, calling on Ankara to respect the territorial integrity of Iraq and withdraw its troops from the Arab country.
Putin signs bill allowing reciprocal impounding of foreign nations’ property
RT | December 30, 2015
President Vladimir Putin has signed amendments to a bill that restricts foreign states’ right not to observe certain Russian legal procedures if these states themselves introduce measures restricting Russia’s legal immunity.
The amendments would change Russian civil and arbitration codes by introducing the principle of limited legal immunity for a foreign state. They detail the procedure of initiating a lawsuit against a foreign nation and serving court warrants to its representatives. The document also prescribes the role of various Russian state agencies in court cases against foreign states.
The amendments are a part of a law that was signed in early November and will come into force on January 1. It allows Russia to impound the property of foreign states, so long as Russian courts rule that these nations have damaged the economic or other interests of the Russian Federation. Before this act was introduced, such steps were only allowed on condition the government of the country in question agreed to them.
The new bill was drafted by the government as a reciprocal measure after several countries this year executed the rulings of international courts and impounded the assets belonging to the Russian state.
For example, in early July, the media reported that Belgium and France had frozen Russian state companies’ assets and curtailed their agencies in these countries. The move was in connection with the June 2014 ruling by the International Criminal Court in The Hague that ordered Russia to pay compensation of $39.9 billion, $1.85 billion and $8.2 billion, respectively, to three companies connected to the once-powerful oil giant Yukos, which was dissolved in 2007.
The Russian Foreign Ministry described these steps as blatant violation of international law and promised to contest these decisions. Vladimir Putin said that Russia would challenge the decision to seize its assets. The president added that the country didn’t recognize the ruling of the Hague court, as it doesn’t participate in the European Energy Charter.
In comments to the newly introduced law on reciprocal impounding of foreign states’ assets, the Justice Ministry wrote that the main idea behind it was to ensure a “jurisdiction balance” between Russia and foreign states. “The number of lawsuits against the Russian Federation is constantly growing and this happens without asking for our agreement for participation in these cases,” a government source told Kommersant daily. Therefore, recognizing rulings by foreign courts is equivalent to conceding national sovereignty, the source added.
Also in July, the Russian Constitutional Court decided that no international treaty or convention has precedence over national sovereignty, and decisions by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) should be upheld only when they don’t contradict basic Russian law. In mid-December, President Putin signed into law a bill allowing the Constitutional Court to overrule the decisions of international courts if such decisions contradict the principle of supremacy of the Russian Constitution.
Only one military service inductee in Reni district of Odessa in autumn 2015
Timer-Odessa – December 29, 2015
During the autumn of 2015, the army recruitment office for the Reni district of Odessa region found only one inductee, the department head for military enlistment, Sergey Lazarev, has announced.
“According to the conscription plan for the Ukrainian military, the Reni district should have contributed ten conscripts suitable for passage into military service. However, there was only one inductee. That is, the plan was met by ten per cent only,” he reported.
“When contacting candidates or their relatives, recruiters find that people are not home or they do not open their door,” said said Lazarev. “Due to the difficult financial situation, many citizens of military age have gone to work outside the region and even the country.”
He added that his military enlistment office has asked police to assist in the search for 414 citizens called up for military service. But none have been found and delivered to the military commissariat.
The problem is being discussed at the board of the district administration in Reni. “People on military service are unable to work or study”, notes the head of the district, Sergei Belyuk.
The spring 2016 military call-up is projecting 195 young residents from Reni district.