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The Russian Duma has unanimously approved legislation moving call-up notices online, making it much harder to evade the draft for the war in Ukraine.

An electronic summons will be considered served as soon as it appears in the personal account of a user on the main government portal. Even if the person has deleted his portal account, the summons will show up on a national digital register and be considered valid.

An electronic summons will mean an automatic ban from leaving Russia. Draftees who fail to report to the conscription office face having their driving licences suspended and a ban on buying and selling property.

Anton Barbashin is a Russian journalist and editorial director of outlet Riddle Russia. He told Newsday there is panic in Russia: 鈥淭he vast majority of Russians do not want to fight. There are about 25 million Russians that are technically-speaking eligible for fighting in he war but they only need now 400,000, so whoever they can get first would be the ones going to war. The rest would be just standing there and waiting for their turn.鈥�

(Picture: Russian conscripts reporting for service. Credit: Getty Images.)

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