At a briefing in Kiev, Markiyan Lubkivsky, press secretary of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said that current Ukrainian legislation does not provide for the possibility of Ukrainian citizens performing military service in foreign armies. "In this regard, accepting Ukrainians for service in the Armed Forces of Russia will contradict the legislation of Ukraine. Citizens of Ukraine will also be held responsible for this in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine," he said.
The press secretary also noted that determining the order and resources for manning the armed forces of the Russian Federation is exclusively an internal matter of Russia and a prerogative of the state leadership, Interfax-Ukraine reports. As for Ukrainian conscripts, this is an internal matter of Ukraine. Even though the Defense Ministry had earlier planned, focusing on NATO standards, to reduce the number of its servicemen from 360,000 to 150,000-180,000 over two to three years.
As Gazeta.Ru recalls, in early April, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that his ministry had prepared a law that would allow residents of the CIS to serve in the Russian armed forces. Ivanov made the statement in Minsk, where he participated in a joint meeting of the Russian and Belarusian defense ministries. According to the Russian military's plan, preparations for this process should be completed in 2004, and a contract-based army will appear in Russia by 2011.