Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced his decision to fire the heads of the country’s regional draft offices on Telegram on Friday.
Explaining his decision, Zelensky said that only “the people who know for certain what war is and why cynicism and bribe-taking during war is high treason should be managing this system”.
According to Zelensky, servicemen who have fought on the front lines or can no longer fight due to getting injured but “kept their dignity and don’t have a cynical attitude” should be the ones entrusted to run the conscription system.
The decision was made following a special session of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, which was also attended by representatives of other governmental agencies. In his post, Zelensky said that as of now there were 112 criminal cases against heads of draft offices, with 33 more suspects pending prosecution.
At the beginning of August, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office reported uncovering a “large-scale draft evasion scheme”. Law enforcement subsequently carried out over 100 raids on draft offices all over Ukraine during which they seized medical records.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that regional officials and members of medical tribunals had jointly created a scheme to sell military exemption certificates for around $6,000 each that deemed individuals to be unfit for service.
