1/ The Russian government has created a new unified database listing all of those eligible for military service, to make it easier to mobilise people, better able to screen out those with exemptions and catch 'evaders' at border checkpoints and via facial recognition cameras. ⬇️ 
2/ Last year's mobilisation was hindered by many problems caused by unreliable records. Mobilisation orders were issued to many exempted people – the seriously ill, fathers with many children, students, and even the dead. Many thousands evaded being mobilised by leaving Russia.
3/ To resolve this, the Russian government has rapidly carried out a project prompted by a decree issued by Putin last November. It included the digitisation of paper records and the unification of databases held by multiple Russian government agencies.
4/ Independent Russian journalists Farida Rustamova and Maxim Tovkaylo report that the Russian government has thrown a huge number of people into the project, with hundreds involved in digitising records in Moscow alone. A test version of the new database is already completed.
5/ According to the journalists, the new database contains "comprehensive data on those liable for military service. Where they live, what phone numbers and email they have, what property they own, what state of health they are in."
6/ Before this project, Russia's military enlistment records were in a chaotic state. A source says:
"Even in Moscow, almost all information in the military registration and enlistment offices was still on paper cards, which had not been updated for decades.
"Even in Moscow, almost all information in the military registration and enlistment offices was still on paper cards, which had not been updated for decades.
7/ Those who were looking for a quiet place to work went to us. That is why after the mobilisation was announced there was chaos. You have read it all yourself. One day a summons was sent to a blind man, the next – to a man without legs.
8/ The reason was that we had no actual data on disability, because we received information on the majority of persons liable for military service only two or three times during their lives.
9/ When they turned 18, when they served in the army or when they completed their military studies at university. And if their employer was obliged to give any data to military registration and enlistment office – for medics, for example.
10/ The military registration specialties were indicated incorrectly in the cards, corrections were not made. Add to this the desire of some military commissars to fulfill the [mobilisation] plan as quickly as possible.
11/ And so it turned out that resuscitation specialists and surgeons were enlisted as grenade launchers and staff liaison officers as tank crew members. In addition, each enlistment office kept its own database, there was no centralised system."
12/ This reliance on paper records lies behind the spate of arson attacks on numerous Russian military enlistment offices over the past year. In many cases, the culprits likely beleived they could avoid mobilisation if they destroyed the records.
13/ Bad records led to the needless loss of people with valuable and scarce specialist skills, as the source notes.
14/ "A volunteer with experience as a military reconnaissance officer, special forces soldier and hand-to-hand combat instructor was for some unknown reason assigned to drive a tank. He and the tank crew were killed in the first month of service."
15/ The new database is intended to identify such people and mobilise them in the correct category, as well as accurately identifying those (such as IT specialists, students and the sick) who have exemptions.
16/ In addition, it's intended to help track down so-called 'evaders' – those who are trying to avoid military service. The database includes mobile phone numbers and photographs.
17/ This will enable 'evaders' to be tracked down by geolocating their mobile phone signals, as well as enabling the authorities to use CCTV cameras with facial recognition systems to track down those trying to evade mobilisation.
18/ The system is also intended to be used to block people fleeing the country, following the departure of an estimated 500,000 to 1 million people last year. Many of those who fled were able to take advantage of bureaucratic inefficiencies, as the journalists report:
19/ "In the autumn, the lists of those banned from leaving the country by the military enlistment offices arrived irregularly at the border checkpoints.
20/ For example, when the crossing to Georgia through the Verkhiy Lars border crossing was already closed to them, the military conscripts managed to go to Kazakhstan for a few days more, and when the lists arrived at the border with Kazakhstan,…
21/ the route through Minsk was available – at the airport of the Belarusian capital the lists arrived with almost a two-week delay.
22/ The system is now being adjusted and, if necessary, all information will be available immediately to border guards, says a source at the security service of a Moscow airport."
23/ While all of this doesn't necessarily mean that another wave of mobilisation is imminent, it's likely to significantly improve the Russian government's ability to do it more quickly and efficiently, with less evasion and less controversy from the wrong people being mobilised.
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