The draft was first reported by Verstka, which said the explanatory note accompanying the document states that Emergency Ministry personnel are increasingly being deployed to fight fires "arising as a result of armed aggression against the Russian Federation."
Units of the Federal Fire Service are understaffed by an average of 22 percent. In the so-called "DNR" and "LNR," the figure is higher, at 25.8 percent and 26.5 percent respectively.
The authors of the bill say only citizens who previously served in the federal fire service and possess "professional experience, skills and qualifications" would be mobilized. But the document itself, according to Sergei Krivenko, director of the human rights group Citizen. Army. Law, contains no clarification that only former firefighters would be called up. He said it uses the general wording "reservists."
Krivenko also noted that the current fire service law provides for a voluntary work procedure, while the new bill would make it possible to compel those mobilized by force to fight fires.
Timofei Vaskin, head of the legal department at the human rights project Conscript's School, told Verstka that the initiative would allow people without experience to be brought in. According to him, mobilization has never been a mechanism for conscripting exclusively trained men, and an inexperienced firefighter is better than none at all.
Vaskin suggested the Emergency Ministry is trying to retain part of the reservists for itself in case of a future mobilization, after the Defense Ministry took them in 2022 and other agencies received nothing. He noted that the Defense Ministry would again organize the mobilization call-up and that a struggle for mobilized personnel could arise between the ministries.
Earlier, the State Duma passed a bill allowing conscript soldiers to be deployed to service in the Emergency Ministry. Conscripts are to be used in fighting fires in populated areas, including urban forests, and in emergency rescue operations as part of military units of the fire service. Emergency Minister Alexander Kurenkov said up to 5,000 conscripts are expected to be sent to fight fires each year.