Human rights activists have accused the Defense Ministry of using repressive methods in this year’s military conscription that could derail official plans for a professional army.
“We had expected the Defense Ministry would launch a fierce assault on civil society, but who would have thought it would be so unprecedentedly brazen,” said Ella Polyakova, a senior member of the Soldiers’ Mothers human rights group.
She said police had raided student hostels, looking for “draft dodgers.” Sometimes students had been detained on their way to exams even though they qualified for deferment from service.
Young men with serious health problems were being drafted to boost conscription numbers. Some diagnoses on medical records were being arbitrarily downgraded to lesser ones, said Tatyana Kuznetsova, a Soldiers’ Mothers leader.
“There was no need for repression,” said Kuznetsova, also a member of the human rights ombudsman’s expert council.
“Earlier, they could draft a flat-footed one, but this time around they took even those with ulcer, asthma, dermatitis and even heart disease. … Why do you need an army of people who are lame, sick, one-eyed and unwilling to serve?” she said at a news conference Monday.
The Defense Ministry declined to comment immediately.
Documented cases of grave diseases among draftees include high blood pressure, severe diabetes, neurosis and epilepsy.
The Defense Ministry has announced plans to build smaller but more mobile, better-paid, better-equipped, professional armed forces.
But the rising numbers of conscripts indicate that Russia is still far from building a truly professional army, critics say.
The armed forces have drafted more than 305,000 conscripts in this year’s spring conscription campaign and plan to boost this number to around 400,000 in the fall. The military says greater numbers are needed to compensate for a reduction of the military-service term from two years to one.
“I hate to say this, but in fact such a conscription with numerous violations calls this reform into question, if not spells the death of it,” said Sergei Krivenko, coordinator of the public movement Citizen and the Army.
Human rights bodies say even young men with criminal records were drafted this year. Official data show 471 Russians died while serving last year, 29 more than in 2007. More than half of all deaths last year were suicides, often caused by the deep-rooted tradition of hazing, when older soldiers bully and humiliate younger ones.
But it is not only ordinary soldiers who commit crimes. Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said last week that crimes among officers hit a 10-year high in the first half of this year.
“We are now investigating the case of soldier Anton Kuznetsov, who was sold by an officer into bondage and spent five years working as a slave at a brick factory in Dagestan,” Polyakova said.