Law obliges men to update their draft data, increases payments to volunteers and adds new punishments for draft dodging.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has signed into law a bill overhauling army mobilisation rules as Ukraine seeks to address acute troop shortages in its fight against Russia’s invasion.

The law will come into force a month after its publication on Ukraine’s parliamentary website on Tuesday.

It obliges men to update their draft data with the authorities, boosts payments to those who volunteer and adds new punishments for draft dodging.

It remains unclear how many soldiers could be mobilised under the new provisions although some serving military personnel and analysts have expressed concern that the law will not be enough to address shortages.

The law lacks much tougher sanctions for draft evasion that were contained in the initial version of the legislation.

The draft caused a public outcry, and there were more than 4,000 amendments before the final reading in parliament.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford, reporting from Lyman in eastern Ukraine, said the law was expected to make it easier to boost conscription amid fears that Russia could launch a new offensive in the coming months.

“Western intelligence agencies and the Ukrainian military say they expect the Russian forces to mount what is being described as ‘a concerted push’ in the next few weeks, certainly by early summer,” he said.

“This is very important when we already know that Ukraine is suffering a severe manpower shortage,” he said.

Draft age lowered

Zelenskyy recently signed a separate law cutting the draft age to 25 from 27 to try to secure more fighting power.

Ukraine began mobilisation immediately after Russia’s invasion in February 2022. The country initially saw a significant influx of volunteer fighters, but numbers later plunged, and thousands of cases of draft evasion have been reported since.

Kyiv’s troops are facing a shortage of ammunition as vital funding from the United States has been blocked by Republicans in Congress for months and the European Union is failing to deliver munitions on time while Russian forces are inching forward.

Army chief Oleksandr Syrskyii said last week that the situation on the eastern front had significantly escalated recently and Russian troops aimed to capture the town of Chasiv Yar by May 9.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is back on the bench after an unexplained one-day absence.

Thomas, 75, was in his usual seat, to the right of Chief Justice John Roberts as the court met to hear arguments in a case about the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Thomas has ignored calls from some progressive groups to step aside from cases involving Jan. 6 because his wife, Ginni, attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally near the White House before protesters descended on the Capitol. Ginni Thomas, a conservative activist, also texted senior Trump administration officials in the weeks after the election offering support and reiterating her belief that there was widespread fraud in the election.

On Monday, Roberts announced Thomas’ absence, without providing an explanation. Justices sometimes miss court, but participate remotely. Thomas did not take part in Monday’s arguments.

He was hospitalized two years ago with an infection, causing him to miss several court sessions. He took part in the cases then, too.

Thomas is the longest serving of the current justices, joining the Supreme Court in 1991.

• Greece plans to establish two large marine parks aiming to safeguard biodiversity and marine ecosystems.
• Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the expansion of marine protected areas by 80 percent will involve banning harmful fishing practices and implementing new monitoring technologies.
• Greece intends to build marine parks in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, covering over 30 percent of its waters.

Greece aims to create two large marine parks as part of an $830 million program to protect biodiversity and marine ecosystems, with the plans to be formally announced at an international oceans conference starting in Athens Tuesday.

But the plan has irked Greece’s neighbor and regional rival, Turkey, while environmental organizations say the initiative doesn’t go far enough, noting that the country also allows environmentally harmful practices such as energy exploration in sensitive marine environments.

“We are increasing the size of our marine protected areas by 80%, banning harmful fishing practices and using new technologies to monitor and enforce the commitments we make here,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said ahead of the conference.

IS THIS TECHNOLOGY THE ANSWER TO CLEANING UP OUR OCEAN’S PLASTIC PROBLEM?

The two-day international meeting being held in Athens aims “to catalyze global action against two overlapping crises, the climate crisis and the crisis of our ocean,” Mitsotakis said. “Countries have come with specific proposals to take decisive action.”

With thousands of islands and islets and one of the longest coastlines in the Mediterranean, Greece has said it will create one new marine park in the Ionian Sea and one in the Aegean Sea, bringing the total area of marine protected areas to over 30% of its waters.

But environmental organizations have called for stronger commitments to environmental protection.

Under a slogan of “The sea is not for sale,” Greenpeace urged leaders attending the Our Ocean Conference in Athens to take concrete measures to protect the world’s marine environment.

CORAL REEFS AROUND THE WORLD ARE EXPERIENCING MASS BLEACHING IN WARMING OCEANS, SCIENTISTS SAY

The conference “must not be simply an opportunity for governments to congratulate themselves for what they have said until now,” said Nikos Charalambidis, head of Greenpeace in Greece. “On the contrary, this must be where serious steps and action plans are presented to prevent the looting of our seas.”

Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and other organizations have leveled particular criticism at Greece for allowing deep-sea seismic exploration for energy and mineral resources in the Hellenic Trench, which includes the deepest waters in the Mediterranean at more than 5,200 meters (17,300 feet).

The trench, which stretches from southwestern Greece to Crete, is a vital habitat for the Mediterranean’s few hundred sperm whales and for other marine mammals already threatened by fishing, ship collisions and plastic pollution.

Asked whether the Greek government planned to extend protection to the entirety of the Hellenic Trench, Theodoros Skylakakis, Greece’s minister for both the environment and energy, stressed that adapting to a green economy requires significant funds over the coming decades.

“We need to be a lot more efficient in everything we do. And not trigger our reaction by ideology but rather trigger it by science, by efficiency and by investment,” Skylakakis said. “And for that, we will need money. If anybody thinks we can meet this challenge of paying for the adaptation … and at the same time don’t have economic growth, they don’t live in this world.”

Greece’s plan for the two marine parks has also irked its neighbor and regional rival Turkey. When the plan was initially aired last week, Turkey’s foreign ministry accused Athens of exploiting environmental issues to push its geopolitical agenda. The two countries, both NATO members, have been at odds for decades over a series of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean, and have reached the brink of war three times in the last 50 years.

Relations have improved somewhat over the past year following a period of heightened tensions that saw the two countries’ warships facing off in the eastern Mediterranean. But Ankara responded with annoyance to the plan for a marine park in the Agean.

“It is known that Greece has long been trying to benefit from almost every platform in the context of Aegean problems,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said. “Despite the recent softening in our relations, it appears that Greece is exploiting environmental issues this time.”

Greece’s foreign ministry retorted that Ankara was “politicizing a clearly environmental issue.”