Military registration and enlistment offices are asked to provide support – Newspaper Kommersant No. 239 (7440) dated 12/23/2022

The Stavropol Regional Duma will apply to the State Duma of the Russian Federation and the Federation Council with a legislative initiative to amend the law “On military duty and military service” to restore military registration tables in all settlements of Russia. Regional parliamentarians explain that “enlarged military commissariats”, where the number of employees has been seriously reduced as a result of optimization, “do not meet the tasks of the country’s defense capability.” Deputy Yuri Gontar made it clear that it is necessary to return the primary military registration to the way it existed in the USSR.

Deputies of the Stavropol Territorial Duma previously stated that the special military operation being carried out on the territory of Ukraine “revealed problems related to the preparation of state authorities, including military authorities, for mobilization measures.” In this regard, members of the regional parliament’s committee on Cossacks, security, inter-parliamentary relations and public associations proposed to amend the federal law “On military duty and military service”, which will increase the number of military registration tables in the country. On Thursday, the regional Duma supported the initiative.

In the territories of municipalities where there are no military commissariats, the primary military registration of citizens is carried out by local governments. For this, military accounting tables are used. After the municipal reform and the abolition of village councils in many settlements, there were no military registration tables. Their functions were transferred to the military commissariats of the municipal district. In the Stavropol region, in the course of the municipal reform, part of the rural areas received the status of an urban district with the actual elimination of local self-government. As a result, the primary registration of citizens liable for military service in rural settlements that were part of the urban district also became the responsibility of enlarged military commissariats.

During the discussion of the initiative, the deputies recalled that the optimization of military registration and enlistment offices carried out in 2009 led to the fact that the number of military commissariats, “in which civilian specialists with low wages work, not military ones,” “has decreased many times over.” In turn, the territorial divisions of urban districts, according to parliamentarians, cannot carry out primary military registration, which “does not meet the tasks of the country’s defense capability.”

One of the authors of the initiative, chairman of the Committee on Cossacks Yuri Gontar, specified that it is necessary to return the primary military registration to the way it existed back in the USSR. “Recent events and serious miscalculations in mobilization have shown the need for military registration in every settlement,” he said. importance for high-quality and instant mobilization”. Speaker of the Regional Duma Nikolai Velikdan added that this position is shared by “colleagues in other regions”, in particular members of the South Russian Parliamentary Association (it includes the legislative bodies of eight regions of the Southern Federal District).

The deputies believe that in the event that colleagues at the federal level support them, in the Stavropol Territory “at least 90-100 employees of military registration tables should be allocated with funding from the Russian Ministry of Defense.” However, the financial and economic justification of the initiative was not presented.

In October 2022, the Stavropol deputies already came out with a similar appeal to the head of the Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko. It was about modernizing DOSAAF and returning to the school program of basic military training (NVP). The parliamentarians emphasized the need to improve the preparation of Russian citizens for military service and “defence of the fatherland” and “solving the problems of maintaining mobilization readiness.” According to the authors of the initiative, DOSAAF’s funding and “its status as a non-profit organization are not sufficient to fulfill state tasks.” At the same time, the discipline “Fundamentals of Life Safety” existing at the school, unlike the Soviet NVP, “does not provide the necessary amount of knowledge and skills in this area.”

Alexandra Larintseva, Pyatigorsk