LAW AND DISORDER

Russian Lawyers Drowning in Requests for Help to Dodge Putin’s Draft

Hundreds of thousands of people have already fled the country to avoid being sent to Ukraine.

Russian lawyers are being inundated with requests for legal advice about how to avoid being called up into military service after president Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilization of 300,000 men. Attorneys and civil society groups in the country say the dreaded draft—which has already sparked an exodus of fighting age citizens from Russia—has left many scrambling for help about being exempted from enlistment. “We are working round the clock,” Sergei Krivenko, who runs a group called Citizen. Army. Law., told Reuters. “People are being torn from their normal lives,” he said. “This is a mobilization without time limit during a war. It could last months or years.” He added that the only of getting out of the army once drafted is “death, injury or prison for disobeying orders.”