What’s behind Putin’s digital crackdown on draft dodgers?

With the break-neck pace with which it tends to respond to measures coming from the Kremlin, this month Russia’s parliament rushed through a new measure intended to make it harder for draftees and mobilised reservists to dodge military service. In the process, it highlighted the country’s slide into techno-authoritarianism.

Until now, the law demanded that the state prove that it had presented the potential serviceman (or his family) with the appropriate draft papers. Although they were meant to be signed for, this still created opportunities for the individuals in question to claim they had never received them. – or make a dash for the border. Hundreds of thousands of reservists did just this in September and October, during the first mobilisation wave.

Now, though, papers will be served electronically through Gosuslugi, the government’s strikingly successful ‘Unified Portal of State and Municipal Services’.