A week ago, the traditional autumn conscription campaign began in Russia. And although its beginning was marked by a small incident - the call was officially announced even before the text of the corresponding decree of Dmitry Medvedev was published on the website of the President of Russia and in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, nevertheless it is known that under arms from October 1 to December 31 This year, 278,800 young men who do not have the deferrals prescribed by the law and are fit for military service for health, at the age from 18 to 27, will have to be delivered. And their dispatch to the troops will begin after November 16.
"The Defense Ministry is not going to make legislative proposals to increase the draft age," Colonel-General Vasily Smirnov, head of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate - Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told NVO about the start of the autumn draft campaign. The general also dispelled the public's fears that the military want to achieve the cancellation of conscription into the army on summons from the military registration and enlistment office, suggesting that the future recruit, when his time comes, to put on soldier's shoulder straps, without unnecessary reminders from the appropriate body, personally appear at the recruiting commission and, having passed it, stand in the soldier's build.
JONGLERS IN RUNNING
True, the reason for the emergence of such suspicions was given, oddly enough, by the head of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate (GOMU) himself. In the summer, at a meeting of the Committee on Defense and Security of the Federation Council, it was General Smirnov who expressed such ideas, including about increasing the draft age to 30 years. After that, a wave of indignation arose in society and in the press. The generals were once again accused of having failed the transfer of the army to a contract-based recruitment principle, that they have no fresh thoughts on how to make military service attractive to young people, so that it really becomes a school of social maturation of young men, learning lessons of courage and military education. And, apparently, the leadership of the GOMU GSh, as not capable of an open dialogue with civil society and having received, to put it mildly, a reprimand from the authorities for prematurely throwing uncounted ideas into the masses, had no choice but to disown their radical proposals. With a hint that the military will not make such amendments to the military service legislation.
You have to understand that others will bring them in. You never know in the same deputy corps of people who are ready to "lend a shoulder" to the reported military department.
And it is not the first time for high-ranking military officials to give up their words. Many colleagues remember how at the beginning of this summer, after the end of the spring conscription campaign, GOMU employees proudly reported to the country's public that the number of draft evaders in the country had dropped sharply - from 12,521 people in 2007 to 5,210 people in the spring of 2009 (NVO Today publishes the official material of GOMU, which demonstrates such dynamics. - VL). But then, at a meeting with senators, the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov, suddenly announced that there were about 200 thousand such draft deviators. Then military officials slightly adjusted this figure and specified - 199 thousand draft evaders.
This fall, Colonel Alexei Knyazev, head of the GOMU conscription direction, has already named other data - 133 thousand. In the Central Federal District alone, according to him, there are 48 thousand draft evaders. Let us note from ourselves, practically eight full-fledged brigades of constant combat readiness.
There was also an explanation in GOMU why there is such a discrepancy in the numbers of the deviators. It turns out that those 5,210 people mentioned in the spring are the guys who received summons, but did not appear at the draft commissions and, naturally, did not go to the service. And the "spring" 199 thousand are those who contrived not to receive any summons at all. He hid at some other address, traveled abroad, including to visit relatives in the CIS countries, in a word, “lay down on the ground like a submarine so that they could not find direction”. The 133 thousand remaining from the spring are the same deviators who were not caught up with the summons from the military registration and enlistment office. About the difference of 66 thousand people, which was formed from the spring conscription to the autumn, GOMU does not give any explanations. Either they were completely removed from the register, or they were still managed to be caught and summoned. In a word, consider what you want.
And the suspicion that the military is manipulating their data for certain opportunistic purposes - to solve conscription problems through some changes in the legislation - is only getting stronger. Including about the cancellation of summons. The generals are trying to convince the public that it will not work otherwise. And if you do not do as suggested by the General Staff, then the country's defense and the combat readiness of the army will collapse below the plinth.
True, the head of the GOMU so far declares that they will still be drafted into the army, as it should be by law, only on summons, although modern methods of notifying recruits via sms, the Internet, social networks of the virtual web are not excluded. But only as a reminder of the need for timely arrival at the military registration and enlistment office. The problem is that there is a “demographic hole” in which Russia is now located. “If from 1980 to 1985 up to 1.5 million boys were born annually, then in 1988 there were only 800 thousand,” General Smirnov complains. Although the same military leaders are satisfied that the quality of the conscript contingent is gradually improving. For example, the number of children who had experience of using drugs and toxic substances before serving in the army decreased - by 2.9% (in the spring it was 3.4%), who got into the police for hooligan sins - 5.6% (in the spring of 2009 their was 8, 7%). They are also gladdened by the fact that more and more graduates of higher educational institutions are joining the army - in the spring of 2010 - almost 17%. More precisely 45327 people.
Nevertheless, the generals' traditional complaints about the health of conscripts continue. The main diseases for which thousands of guys are exempted from conscription are reduced to such categories as mental disorders, diseases of the digestive system, circulatory system, musculoskeletal system (see diagram). And although the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Nikolai Makarov, once noted that 40% of those who received a "white ticket" due to illness simply bought these certificates, there is information that 94.6 thousand young men, almost 10% from those who came to the draft commissions in the spring, the doctors were forced to send them for a new outpatient or inpatient examination to medical organizations.
And as for the remaining 133 thousand draft deviators, they are considered by the General Staff to be "a reserve of future conscriptions." Moreover, now military service, as the military leaders say, has become much more comfortable and humane than it was before.
FEATURES WITHOUT SPECIAL FEATURES
They said a lot about the humanity of military service. For example, that since this autumn, the parents of conscripts, as well as human rights activists, have been allowed to attend a meeting of the draft board, which will determine the fate of their son in the army. There they will be able to find out in which troops and where he will go to serve. Moreover, if they themselves cannot be there, then within a week the military registration and enlistment office is obliged to notify them to which part the son went. Moreover, now the extraterritorial principle of manning the troops is being canceled, and young men will carry out military service not far from home, within the military district from which they are called up.
True, the districts are now too large - the Western is practically the entire European part of Russia, from the Volga to the Baltic and from the Rostov region to the Arctic Ocean and to the Matochkin Shar Strait. Eastern - from Baikal to the Pacific Ocean, Sakhalin and the Kuriles. Distances of a thousand kilometers, and the concept of "near home becomes unnecessarily extensible." But Colonel-General Smirnov promised that those guys who have a wife, a small child, retired parents, or are seriously ill, will, if possible, be provided with a place of service in their hometown or near it. But you cannot sew promises to the case, and in the military registration and enlistment office it is useless to refer to the words of the head of GOMU. They have their own approaches: there is a directive - one approach, no directive - another. And the question is how to understand this directive and the words "whenever possible". Not every city has a military unit nearby. And not every military unit can be sent to every conscript.
It is reported from the Kaliningrad region that about 3 thousand people will be commissioned there by the draft commissions. Most of them will serve in the Baltic Fleet. Only 20 young men will be sent to the Presidential Regiment of the Federal Guard Service. And from the cities and regions of the Russian Federation, another 4 thousand boys and 1.5 thousand boys are expected to enter schools for junior specialists. Based on the naval crew in Kaliningrad and the naval semi-crew of the Leningrad naval base in the city of Lomonosov near St. Petersburg. So count how many of those who arrive at the fleet will be near the house. Some will need to fly or cross the Lithuanian and Belarusian borders to get there. And only during the vacation, which is promised to those who will not be able to go on leave to their parents. However, again, to promise does not mean to marry.
Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, for example, promised the parents of the conscripts that they would be able to accompany their sons in the train to the final destination where the children would serve. But the executive secretary of the Union of Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, Valentina Melnikova, rightly doubts that every family will have the means to go on such a trip. And if the military department takes the father or mother in one direction for free, then they will probably have to go back for theirs. It is promised that the parent committees will be able to resume work in the units. Also from among the relatives of the soldiers who serve here. They will meet three times a year to solve the issues that the initiative group or commander will put before them. It is possible that everything will boil down, as in some schools, to raising funds for the needs of an educational institution (in this case, a military unit) - there is always not enough money for everyone. And, which is also very important, what is now called the humanization of military service - now all soldiers are allowed to have mobile phones.
But they will be able to use them only in their free time from the performance of official duties. The head of the supervision department of the Main Military Prosecutor's Office, Major General of Justice Alexander Nikitin, who also took part in the press conference, even named the number of the minister's directive establishing the right to use a mobile phone. It is not secret, it was signed on December 20, 2009 No. 205/02/862. Supported by the order of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office dated April 14, 2010 No. 212/286/10.
The procedure is as follows: if a soldier is not on duty, not in the field, not in class, he can take his phone from the commander and call mom and dad. Even your girlfriend. The cell phone should help relieve stress, which is almost inevitable when a person changes from "free" civilian clothes to uniform army camouflage.
A five-day work week, parental leave on Saturday and Sunday, cancellation of orders for the kitchen and cleaning the territory, which will be done by third-party organizations on the basis of outsourcing, an hour-long afternoon nap, as it happens in the 5th separate Taman motorized rifle brigade, where journalists and bloggers are taken and representatives of the Public Council under the Minister of Defense - the head of the GOMU called it an "experiment". If this experiment is recognized as successful (we add on our own, and there is enough money, including to turn the barracks into comfortable dormitories for soldiers. - V. L.), it will be adopted throughout all the armed forces.
NUMBER GAMES
At the same time, Colonel-General Vasily Smirnov said that the army and navy would not refuse to recruit contract soldiers. Only they will be recruited after the end of military service and for positions that determine the combat readiness of a military unit - as platoon commanders, their deputies, and squad leaders. In the Navy - in the positions of seafarers, in the marines and in coastal units. And also in divers, hydroacoustics, gunners, minders, radiometrists, torpedo operators, helmsmen - that is, where deep knowledge and strong skills are required. To the Ground Forces - to all military units deployed on the territory of Chechnya, as well as drivers of categories "D" and "E". In the Air Force - aviation mechanics, radio operators, air gunners, aviation technicians, operators of charging machines. In the Strategic Missile Forces - diesel locomotive drivers, technicians and numbers of calculation of launchers, numbers of calculations of measuring points, chiefs of radio direction finders, telemetry stations. In the Airborne Forces - grenade launchers, snipers, sappers, miners, scouts, parachute stackers, anti-aircraft gunners. But no more than 105 thousand for all armed forces. There is no money for more contractors.
And a few more numbers to think about. The call for the fall of 2010 - 278 800 people. In the spring, 270,600 men were commissioned. In total, as of January 1, 2011, it turns out that the Russian army will have 449,400 conscript soldiers and sergeants. Add to this the 150,000 officers who are to remain in the ranks, and about 80-130,000 contract soldiers (along with female military personnel). What happens? That the army of our country will not be a million, as was stated on all levels of the ministerial hierarchy, but a maximum of only 729,400 servicemen.
Colonel-General Vasily Smirnov did not name the real number of those who are in the ranks today. He just made a reservation that today there are even more officers than 150 thousand, and there are a little more contract soldiers than there should be. “But we have enough,” he said.
Let's believe these words. After all, an army of millions, as military experts have always argued, is not a panacea for Russia. According to its economic and demographic capabilities, it can and should still be less.
