The delay is not raised to a power – Newspaper Kommersant No. 8 (7453) of 01/18/2023

Russian scientists, candidates and doctors of science are unlikely to be able to count on automatic reservations from partial mobilization. The legal department of the State Duma did not support the bill of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which introduces such a benefit. However, the Ministry of Education and Science assured Kommersant that the current legislation quite allowed during the period of active conscription of the mobilized “to work out with the military registration and enlistment offices” in working order the issues of granting a deferment to scientists.

The legal department of the State Duma did not support the bill submitted to parliament in October by Deputy Mikhail Matveev (KPRF).

The amendments proposed to give a deferment from partial mobilization to all citizens who have a doctorate or a candidate of sciences. But in the conclusion, signed by the head of the department, Roman Kolachev, it is said that such a benefit does not correlate with the approach adopted in the legislation of the Russian Federation.

Mr. Kolachev recalls that “mobilization is a special legal regime introduced in connection with the need for the state to solve tasks that the current composition of the RF Armed Forces in peacetime cannot be implemented.” Therefore, “the institution of deferment uses exceptional circumstances as grounds for granting it.” As such, he considers either the state of health of a citizen, or “the presence of social encumbrances (a certain number of minor children, caring for a family member, etc.)”, or “a certain type of activity.” The State Duma Committee on Defense stated that they had not yet given a response to the bill.

Recall that the partial mobilization of citizens was announced by President Vladimir Putin on September 21. A few days later, he signed a deferment decree for full-time and part-time students; later students of non-state universities and graduate students received a similar benefit. Since the end of September, many officials and public figures have come up with initiatives to provide reservations for other categories of citizens related to education. Thus, the Ministry of Education sent a petition to the government for a deferment for school teachers (see “Kommersant” dated October 16). The trade union “University Solidarity” came up with the initiative to give a deferral for university teachers. Members of the academic “July 1st Club” pushed for a reprieve for PhDs and PhDs; a similar proposal was made by RAS President Gennady Krasnikov.

Andronik Arutyunov, co-chairman of the University Solidarity trade union, believes that the scientific and teaching staff of universities will be the last to be affected by the mobilization. But scientists, technicians and engineers “sooner or later they may start to be drafted,” the expert believes: “They have certain technical skills, they will not need to be additionally taught in the army.” According to the representative of the trade union, only a small percentage of employees of universities and research institutes received a paper with a signature and a seal confirming the reservation. “Lists have been submitted for all other employees, but there are no official papers and orders,” he says. “There is an agreement between the Ministry of Education and Science and the Ministry of Defense that academic staff will not be called up. And I have no reliable information that they were called from large cities. But this is an unofficial agreement: today it is, but tomorrow it may not be.”

Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, senior lecturer at the Russian State Humanitarian University Vladimir Shelestin points out that the departure of scientists from Russia has been going on for almost a year and may intensify.

“Of course, many scientists are worried. Even those university employees who are really protected by the reservation assume that the reservation can be canceled at any time,” he says. Mr. Shelestin admits that he is “very worried” about the future of his field of science in Russia: “If, due to mobilization measures, I do not have time to teach our students Hittology, then there will be no one to teach them – colleagues in other universities are overloaded, many have temporarily left, and The largest Hittological program in the country operates in our Russian State University for the Humanities”.

In the State Duma, we note, there is another bill on the deferral of partial mobilization for all candidates and doctors of science. It was introduced in mid-December by a group of deputies from the parties “New People”, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the LDPR (see “Kommersant” dated December 17, 2022). One of its authors, deputy Ksenia Goryacheva, believes that the document still has a chance. “Our bill is very detailed and legally precise in the terms used,” she wrote in her Telegram channel. “They exclude possible problems in the course of law enforcement that the Ministry of Defense may worry about. We have already received a response from the apparatus of the State Duma, there are no comments on the bill, it complies with the regulations, it does not need the government’s conclusion and has been sent to the defense committee.”

The Ministry of Education and Science told Kommersant that on October 31, 2022, the Ministry of Defense announced the completion of conscription from the reserve as part of partial mobilization. “During the period of partial mobilization, a mechanism was implemented under which universities and scientific organizations worked out, in working order, with the military registration and enlistment offices, questions on granting a deferment from mobilization for their employees,” the scientific ministry said. mobilizations are marked “for official use”, therefore, they cannot be presented in open sources.

The Ministry of Education and Science assures that these documents are sufficient to book the vast majority of candidates of sciences, doctors of sciences and representatives of the teaching staff who carry out their labor activities in universities and scientific organizations.

In autumn, the department opened a hotline on mobilization issues. “Then in the first three days, more than 10 thousand calls were received,” the Ministry of Education and Science says. “From October 31 to November 6, 2022, the hotline received 289 calls. Of these, on the issues of deferment from conscription for partial mobilization for teachers, doctoral students – a small number, only five. Since November 6, 2022, there have been no calls from these categories of citizens.”

Recall that earlier the Ministry of Defense did not support the version of the bill, which provided for a delay only for scientists, workers in universities and research institutes. In the military department, the initiative was considered “inappropriate” in the conditions of “guaranteed support for the mobilization deployment of the RF Armed Forces.”

Anna Vasilyeva