Former football representative and bronze medalist from Euro 2008 Dinijar Biljaletdinov received a call-up order as part of the Russian partial mobilization and should join the fighting in Ukraine.
“Yes, Dinijar received a call-up order,” the footballer’s father Rinat Biljaletdinov confirmed to RIA Novosti.
According to the partial mobilization announced by President Vladimir Putin a week ago, Russia intends to call up 300,000 reservists with military experience. This also applies to the now thirty-seven-year-old former footballer.
“It is difficult because he has never been in the army. He completed military service, but it was specific, with a focus on sports. And it was 19 years ago, when he was eighteen,” the elder Biljaletdinov wonders.
His son was a supporter of Lokomotiv Moscow, in 2009 he transferred to Everton. He kicked off three seasons in the English Premier League and scored eight goals in 59 matches. Then he returned to his homeland and worked in the Moscow clubs Spartak and Torpedo, he also played for Anži Makhačkal and Rubin Kazan. He ended his career four years ago in Trakai, Lithuania.
He played 46 games for the national team and scored six goals, helping the national team win bronze at Euro 2008, where he played in all of Russia’s matches. Now he worked as an assistant coach in the reserve of the second division Moscow club Rodina (in translation Vlast).
“According to the law, mobilization should concern people under 35 years of age, and he is 37, so there are some discrepancies and it will be determined whether he was called up legitimately,” the Russian agency quoted the football player’s father as saying.
According to the head of the defense committee in the Russian parliament, Andrei Kartapolov, the mobilization mainly concerns reserve soldiers and non-commissioned officers up to the age of 35, as well as junior officers in the reserve up to the age of 45. But Andrey Gurulyov, a member of the defense committee in the Russian Duma, said that it could apply to reservists up to the age of 50.
According to its representatives, Moscow is conducting a partial mobilization for the purpose of “controlling the territories that were liberated during the special operation in Ukraine”.
