As of end of October, we have 906,000 exemptions from military service - Svyrydenko
First Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Yuliia Svyrydenko denied the information that 1.5 million men had been deferred from mobilisation due to an abnormally rapid increase in the number of exemptions.
In an interview with Forbes, she said that the real number is one third less, Censor.NET reports.
"This is not true. At the peak, we had 950,000 "unique exemptions from military service". When the exemption through Diia appeared, at some point the statistics increased to 1.049 million people, but this is due to double counting, as some companies simultaneously submitted documents in both paper and electronic form," she said.
"As of the end of October, we have 906,000 exemptions from military service," said Svyrydenko.
The authorities are currently auditing the exemptions provided at the initiative of the Ministry of Defense, and no new deferrals are being issued during this period. Starting October 25, the military exemption procedure is valid only for employees who were booked before May 31.
Based on the results of the audit, Svyrydenko said, the criteria for criticality may change, particularly with regard to salaries.
"We often meet with businesses, and they say that their average salary of those who are exempted is about 19,000 and above. Therefore, the businesses we talk to say that they don't mind if this figure is officially higher and corresponds to the real state of affairs," she said.
Svyrydenko also said that 19,730 enterprises in Ukraine currently have the status of critical, of which about 9,500 were identified by regions and the rest by ministries.
