Do these summonses count?

Transcript

1. On Saturday night, Moscow police raided a park where the city's teenagers hang out.
2. Some of the young men they took say they left
3. a police station with summonses from the army's draft office.
4. The park is called Gorka, in Kitai-Gorod, less than a kilometre from Red Square.
5. For over a year, Kitai-Gorod has been where Moscow's alternative kids meet.
6. Emo, goths, punks.
7. Many of them under 18.
8. At about eight in the evening, more than 10 police vans pulled up.
9. Witnesses say riot police closed off the park, and left one way out.
10. Towards the vans.
11. The police statement gives no total.
12. Published estimates range from about 100 to as many as 300.
13. Moscow police called it a preventive operation,
14. against offences like drinking in public.
15. Their statement doesn't mention the army.
16. At one station, a young man says about 80 detainees were lined up,
17. and their passports taken.
18. Then, he says, everyone in that line was handed a summons.
19. "No exceptions.
20. I have a deferment, but they gave me one anyway."
21. A legal-aid group for men facing the draft says two detainees came to it for help.
22. It says both were told to report on Monday, at nine in the morning.
23. By its account, one summons was to clarify military registration documents,
24. and police handed it over.
25. The other went to a postgraduate student with a deferment,
26. which puts off military service, but doesn't stop a summons.
27. On paper, a summons like that isn't an order to start service.
28. It calls you in to update your records.
29. But the 18-year-old told the group he fears he'll be sent straight for a draft medical.
30. Russian law names who can hand over a summons: the post,
31. the draft office's own staff, or a man's employer or university.
32. The police aren't on that list.
33. Who actually handed these over hasn't been established.
34. Skipping a summons without a valid reason can mean a fine.
35. If it's in the state's online register,
36. a man can be barred from leaving the country.
37. And if it counts as delivered, missing it can later limit his driving and loans.
38. Do these summonses count?
39. The group says the postgraduate's summons isn't in that register,
40. and its spokesman says the men don't have to go.
41. A detainee also says that in his van,
42. everyone over 18 was pressed to sign an army contract.
43. Russia says its units in Ukraine are staffed by contract soldiers.
44. Whether anyone signed isn't known.
45. Both summonses say Monday, nine a.m.
46. Police explain the raid as keeping public order.
47. It doesn't explain the summonses, or the contract offers.