Russia's president has signed a new law on conscription operations as his forces try to expand their control in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, while Finland has taken the first action on Russia's borders since Helsinki joined NATO.

The law, signed by Putin on Friday after being passed by parliament two days ago, provides for the creation of a unified military registration register that allows those wanted for military service to be notified by electronic summonses.

According to the text of the law, summonses to military service will be sent on paper and will be repeated electronically. The electronic summons will be considered delivered from the moment it is published in the citizen's personal account in the "Electronic Unified Military Registration Register".

In addition, citizens subject to conscription will not be able to leave Russia from the day they receive the summons until they appear at the military conscription branch.

According to the law, a number of restrictions are imposed on citizens who received a summons, but did not report to the military recruitment branch.

Russian reservists were called up for military service as part of a partial mobilization late last year (Reuters)

There are millions of Russian men registered in the electronic unified register of military registration, who can be called up for conscription through this portal.

The Kremlin said it did not expect the new law to lead to a new wave of young people fleeing the country, stressing that the legislation had nothing to do with military mobilization. Ahead of the law's passage, the Kremlin said there would be no second wave of mobilization after President Vladimir Putin's partial order last September to bolster his forces in its war in Ukraine.

Putin's order for partial mobilization allowed hundreds of thousands of young Russians to join the army. While others ignored their summonses, tens of thousands preferred to flee the country, according to media reports.

Maneuvers and iron fence

Finland held military exercises with Germany and Portugal, the first of its kind since joining NATO in early April.

The Finnish Navy said in a statement on Friday that 3 Finnish ships conducted symbolic exercises in the Gulf of Finland with German and Portuguese frigates.

At the same time, Finland began erecting the first section of an iron fence on its 1300,<>-kilometer border with Russia, less than two weeks after joining NATO.

The fence, made of steel mesh, will be equipped with monitoring equipment, project manager Ismo Korki said, adding that it is scheduled to stretch over 200 kilometers after all its parts are implemented by the end of 2026.

Finland has started the first phase of the project to erect an iron fence on its border with Russia (French)

The Finnish official said the new fence would be 3 meters high, would be topped with barbed wire and would cost his government $417 million.

The start of part of the fence comes as hundreds of attempts to cross the Russian-Finnish border illegally were thwarted last year.

It should be noted that Poland and the Baltic states have already begun to erect a fence on their borders with Russia and Belarus after the Russian offensive on Ukraine began in February 2022.

Finland's decision to join NATO ended seven decades of strategic non-alignment that began after the country repelled an attempted Soviet invasion during World War II. In the postwar period, Helsinki chose to maintain friendly relations with Moscow.

But Ukraine's more than year-long war has prompted Finns to seek security under NATO's collective defense agreement, which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all member states.

Counterattack

On the ground, the Russian military website Rebar said that Ukrainian forces are intensifying preparations to start what it called the spring-summer offensive by accumulating personnel, equipment and ammunition.

Ukrainian forces are preparing for an all-out offensive along the front line, which assumes Russia's inability to counter such an attack.

Ukrainian forces are maneuvering to obscure the main sites from which the offensive will be launched by setting up false attack assembly points, sending misleading signals and piling phones in abandoned places to distract monitoring by Russian forces.

Ukrainian unit bombards Russian positions in the vicinity of Pakhmut with artillery (Anadolu Agency)

Meanwhile, European officials familiar with the matter said yesterday that Ukraine's allies are underestimating their expectations for the next offensive, and that intense fighting is needed until next year to create better conditions on the ground.

Allies are increasingly skeptical of the Ukrainian military's ability to make a breakthrough this year, and the most realistic goal is for Ukrainian forces to advance 30 kilometers to target Russian artillery supply lines.

The website quoted European military officials as saying that the Ukrainian offensive is expected to begin by the middle of next month, and on several axes.