By Vestnik Kavkaza
In late July, the spring draft was completed in Russia. According to the Deputy Chief of Staff Colonel General Vasily Smirnov, and head of the supervision of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office Major General Alexander Nikitin, the situation around the draft to the Russian army is improving, both in terms of public opinion and in legal terms.
"There is a positive trend. A positive public attitude to military service is starting to appear. The number of evaders decreased by 18% compared to last fall. And there are 15% fewer of those refusing to receive the call or who unregistered themselves and moved to other regions. Nearly a thousand students took a break in their studies and went to serve in the army," Smirnov told journalists on Thursday. He emphasized that, to date, the Defense Ministry has been doing its best for the draft to be open.
"A trend of reduction in crime by 10 percent has been observed in 2012, and it remains the same in the first half of this year. This is due to the improvement of the commanders, tightening of the Defense Ministry and the new forms such as science units," the head of the supervision of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office Major-General Alexander Nikitin said at a round-table discussion at RIA Novosti. According to him, 800-1000 young people are convicted annually Russia for draft evasion. He noted that about a thousand students in 2013 took a break in their studies to join the army.
The Ministry of Defence has recently advocated an initiative that recruits will serve in those regions from where they are drafted, if possible. “50 percent or more of conscripts are serving in those regions where they have been drafted,” Vasily Smirnov reported.
“In the last few recruiting periods the state of law and order in the units where young people go is improving,” Alexander Nikitin says. “If in 2012 we have decreased the level of criminal offenses in the military by more than 10%, these trends continue also now, in the first half of the current year. Here we also note the reduction of crime, and there was a reduction of offences related to some kind of relationship between military men. These are positive trends, and they are completely objective.”
Meanwhile, in late July the Council of Federation adopted the law directed at promotion of the image and attractiveness of the military service, requiring the ban on employing for a state service people who flinched from servicing in army. Now the head of the presidential council on human rights, Mikhail Fedotov, fears that recent amendments can deprive residents of the North Caucasus of state servicing. “What should residents of the NCFD do? They have no draft, so they won’t have the police, will they? No state service?” Fedotov asks.
Nevertheless, experts believe that Sergey Shoygu is the first defense minister in the modern history of Russia, under whom the number of escapists stops growing – the spring draft was completed for 100%. The pride of the modernized Russian army is science and sporting units.
