Preparations for national resistance, civil-military administration for Sloviansk, and childbirth allowance raise

28 May 2021
Preparations for national resistance, civil-military administration for Sloviansk, and childbirth allowance raise
Home > Monitoring > Preparations for national resistance, civil-military administration for Sloviansk, and childbirth allowance raise

There are no plenary meetings of the Verkhovna Rada this week, but the President and the Cabinet are restless in their attempts to make our life better. Volodymyr Zelensky decided to create a civil-military administration in Sloviansk and submitted two draft bills for the Parliament to consider: on territorial defense and resistance movement. Meanwhile, the Cabinet was preparing for International Children’s Day and proposed to raise childbirth/adoption allowances.

Draft bills on the foundations of national resistance (#5557 and #5558)

Sponsor: the President.

Status: submitted to the Verkhovna Rada.

Who is affected: Ukrainian citizens, the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, government bodies, and local governments.

Summary of the bills:

  • Territorial Defense Forces are defined as a separate military branch of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
  • territorial defense will perform the following tasks:
  • strengthening the borderline surveillance
  • helping to guard and defend critical facilities
  • maintaining public security
  • in every oblast and big city (with a population over 900 thousand) territorial defense brigades will be created. Territorial defense battalions will be created for each raion and oblast center, territorial communities will be allowed to have territorial community volunteer units
  • during peacetime, territorial defense military units are to be formed of contract servicemen and reserve officers. During the special period — also of conscripted draftees and reservists. Territorial community volunteer units are to be formed of volunteers
  • commanding officers of the volunteer units are to be appointed by the Commander of the Territorial Defense Forces with consent from the Commander of the Special Operations Forces and a local council
  • to be prepared for a total or partial occupation of the Ukrainian territory, a system of national resistance will be created. The tasks of the resistance movement will be to create resistance cells, interfere with enemy forces’ operations, and national patriotic education
  • to launch the system of national resistance, the bills propose to increase the number of Armed Forces’ strength by 11 thousand soldiers and allocate additional ₴2.3 bln in 2022 for the upkeep (and over ₴700 mln total for several years after).

What is rightby creating a unified system of territorial defense, the state builds its capacity to fight off the aggressor.

What is wrong:

  • it is doubtful that the Soviet territorial defense system will prove effective in case of a full-fledged invasion of the Russian Federation and intensive fighting. It is impossible to provide adequate training for irregular troops and ensure sufficient coordination between national resistance units under the occupation
  • costs of keeping 11,000 soldiers of the Territorial Defense Forces in military service are unreasonably higher than benefits from the territorial defense. When the regular army is severely underfunded, the territorial defense cannot be a priority
  • to give local governments the authority to influence appointments of territorial community volunteer military units’ commanders is a potential threat to the national security since in some territorial communities local councils are pro-Russian. Also, even now there are reports about the doubtful reputation of some of the territorial defense units.

Civil-military administration for Sloviansk (decree # 210/2021)

Decisionmakerthe President.

Who is affected: citizens, city council, and mayor of Sloviansk.

Summary of the decree:

  • creates a civil-military administration in Sloviansk
  • orders the Commander of the Joint Forces and the head of Donetsk oblast state administration to make preparations for the launch of the CMA
  • removes the mayor and city councilors from office until further notice.

What is wrong:

  • by creating the CMA, the President acts outside of his constitutional authority. Moreover, the Constitution does not recognize civil-military administrations as legitimate state or local governing bodies
  • the security situation in the city gives no reason to create a CMA there, Sloviansk is outside the combat zone since the midsummer of 2014. The previous city council and mayor were elected in 2015 and successfully served their term.

Alternative solution:

What’s next: the civil-military administration of Sloviansk will be created and registered in the Unified state register of legal entities, sole proprietors, and public organizations. When this is done, the mayor and city councilors will be officially removed from office and the CMA will exercise their powers.

Childbirth allowance raise

Initiator: the Cabinet.

Status: the bill awaits to be approved in the Cabinet session.

Who is affected: parents of newborns and adoptive parents.

Summary of the bill:

  • from January 1, 2022, the amount of childbirth allowance (and one-time adoption allowance) will be increased from ₴41,280 to ₴50,000. Also, the bill provisions annual revisions of the allowance rate as adjusted for the inflation rate from 2023 onwards.

What is right:

  • depopulation is a grievous problem for Ukraine, so it is reasonable for the Cabinet to provide such material incentives aiming at increasing the birth-rate
  • the clause adjusting the allowance for inflation rate will allow the Cabinet to conduct annual allowance indexations without asking the Parliament to amend the law each time.

What’s next: the Verkhovna Rada will consider the bill and allocate the necessary funding from the government budget-2022 if the bill is adopted.

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