A bill on creating a unified military register in Ukraine entered into force on April 20, just six days after it was signed by the president.
Under the new law, all Ukrainian citizens eligible for military service, reserve duties or other defense activities will be included in a classified electronic database for the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff. The data can be used for carrying out mobilizations and conscription, as well as recruiting personnel for contract service.
The defense ministry will be provided with a list, based on the electoral roll, of all Ukrainian citizens aged 18-60, from which people unfit to serve will be gradually excluded.
The ministry said the register would be made up of citizen profiles with personal data, including names, photographs, date and place of birth, addresses, all passport details, taxpayer identification numbers, and information about education and current workplace. Data about the citizen’s parents or foster guardians will also be included.
The database will also record information about when a citizen crosses the state border.
According to the law, no consent for the processing of this personal data from a citizen is required.
The military sees the unified register as a big leap forward for Ukraine’s armed forces compared to the chaotic six waves of mobilization to the Donbas frontline carried out by the country in 2014 and 2015.
“Today databases of citizens fit for military service are kept in paper files,” said Taras Pastukh, a lawmaker from the Samopomich Party faction in parliament and one of the authors of the bill.
“During conscription periods, some of the personal files get lost, or disappear, or are never taken up. Of course, this means those who are deferred from service have slipped someone a bribe at a recruitment office. Or it concerns officials’ children who have ‘other priorities’ in their lives apart from military service.”
According to executive order issued on March 23, up to 14,135 recruits are to be called up in April and May for compulsory military service lasting from 12 to 18 months. Conscript soldiers aged 20-27 cannot be deployed within the Donbas warzone, although they can sign a combat service contract after undergoing basic military training.
The authors claim the register a useful tool for mobilizing reserve manpower with the appropriate military skills.
“The register will help the military quickly find men of the appropriate age, with specific health indicators or military professions,” Pastukh said. “In other words, the draftees the army needs at that moment – mechanized forces specialists, tankmen, artillery men, air defense, communications, electronic warfare specialists, etc.”
Apart from that, the register will also contain information about former servicemen, reservists and retired servicemen, as well as on combat veterans, which will make the granting of military pensions or other privileges much easier, the bill’s authors said. As many as 190,000 Ukrainian servicemen have acquired combat veteran status since the war in the Donbas broke out in the spring of 2014.
Eliminating paperwork in military registration is another step towards shifting Ukraine’s armed forces to NATO standards, as stipulated by the national strategic defense plan. By late 2020, Ukraine has to create a military human resource reserve system “built on basic European approaches,” the document says.
However, much of the data on new draftees and reserve servicemen for the electronic database will be still collected via paperwork done at local military recruitment offices.
The bill on creating the database was submitted to Ukraine’s parliament in late November 2015, and underwent numerous amendments before being approved. The bill’s opponents said that highly sensitive and detailed information about the country’s defenses could easily be stolen by the country’s enemies, including Russia, which is claimed to regularly carry out state-backed hacking attacks.
Countering these criticisms, Samopomich Party lawmaker Andriy Teteruk said during the debate on the bill on March 16 that the software developed in Ukraine for the database provides “the highest level of encryption protections.”
The Opposition Block and Batkivshchyna Party voted against the bill on March 16, but the law was finally approved by the Verkhovna Rada, with 236 lawmakers voting in favor.
According to General Staff estimates, creating the database will cost Ukrainian taxpayers Hr 7 million ($261,000), with at least Hr 4 million ($149,000) needed to pay for software, and another Hr 3 million ($112,000) for security systems and a state expert review.
The register should be in operation by late 2018, according to Mykola Sadekov, a senior officer on the General Staff.
