Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky worried about upsurge of violence in the Russian army
The number of crimes committed by servicemen in 2010 has decreased, said on Thursday the head of the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office (GVP) Sergei Fridinsky. At the same time, he said that the number of violent crimes in military formations is growing. Prosecutorial practice confirms that this is due to an increase in the conscript contingent and serious omissions in the work of individual commanders. Experts believe that violence in the barracks has not only increased, but it has also taken on new forms.
According to Fridinsky, the motives and nature of such offenses have changed.
“Bad habits and street orders come to military collectives with every new call,” said the military prosecutor. - More and more often they extort money from colleagues, take away their mobile phones, which is often accompanied by physical violence.
In the troops, says the head of the GVP, as well as in society as a whole, there are problems associated with religious intolerance. At the same time, some destructive forces are trying to provoke conflicts in the army, including on ethnic grounds.
The head of the GVP pointed out the need to take effective measures to prevent nationalist and other extremist manifestations in the army.
Fridinsky also emphasized that "the situation in different power structures is ambiguous: while crime has decreased in the armed forces and internal troops, the number of criminal acts in units and formations of the Russian border service has increased."
Recall that on February 15, the head of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, Vyacheslav Lebedev, gave similar data at a meeting of the chairmen of regional, regional and republican courts. According to him, last year the number of criminal cases of the so-called draft deviators considered by military courts has significantly decreased, while the number of criminal cases related to violation of the statutory rules of relations between servicemen without their subordination has increased by a third.
Sergei Krivenko, coordinator of the Citizen and the Army public initiative, notes: “Now we are recording that such a form of bullying as diktat and coercion of recruits by old-timers has actually collapsed. But the violence has taken on other forms."
Experts say that where officers keep order, there are no such phenomena. But they emphasize that the reason for such negative trends is most likely a change in the army manning system. The reduction in service life to a year has led to the fact that now almost half of those who were called up consider themselves to be old-timers.
We should not forget about the reduction of training officers in the troops, which also influenced the growth of violence. An interesting commentary by Denis Gutsko, a famous contemporary writer, who recalls his army experience, says: “From my own experience, I can say that most of the problems in the army are due to the laziness of the officer. I saw both units in which there was terry hazing, and units in which there was none at all. In one division, the officer was the indisputable authority for the soldiers. In another - the foreman, a huge guy, did not allow bullying. Where hazing thrives, the quack officer usually assigns his duties to old-timers or to some close-knit, often ethnic group. Well, as a result, the department has an external order and nothing more."
Experts say that there are no recipes for quick treatment and bullying and crimes in the troops. However, they unanimously emphasize that everything in the army should be based on honest officers, for whom the army is a vocation. There are still many of them, but their promotion is hindered by corruption and bureaucracy.
In addition, it is clear that the army is just a slice of society and it is impossible to cure it alone.
Comments Anatoly Tsyganok, Candidate of Military Sciences, Head of the Center for Military Forecasting
The jump in hazing with the army's transition to a one-year conscription is indeed being noted. Despite the reduction of many units, the reorganization of divisions into brigades and a decrease in the number of soldiers required for conscription, the country faced another difficulty: if earlier, when conscripts served for two years, during each draft it was necessary to recruit, for example, 150 thousand people, then now this figure has doubled accordingly.
Therefore, it turns out that the half of the recruits who came in the spring already consider themselves "grandfathers" in relation to those who came in the fall. Previously, there were about a quarter of "grandfathers", now half. But the order remained the same. Don't go anywhere. Thus, the growth in the number of "grandfathers" has also caused an increase in hazing.
The army is again turning into a workers 'and peasants' army. Wealthy parents do their best to relieve their children of the service. The low level of education also affects the habits of people who come to the armed forces today.
In addition, it is important to understand that guys at the age of 18 are conflicted in themselves. It is foolish to expect that a hundred healthy men, placed together, will easily get along with each other. Everyone has their own habits.
All these people need to be educated, united, made to realize themselves as military personnel. Here, a large role belongs to commanders: officers, sergeants.
However, after the reform carried out by the Ministry of Defense, more than 200,000 officers were simply fired. Now the president of the country says that 70 thousand of them need to be returned. It turns out that the troops need them. But few will go back now.
Few in the troops and intelligent sergeants. The educational level of the sergeant staff, as well as of the draftees in general, is very low. During the Soviet era, a sergeant was trained for one year, and he served for another two years. Now we have reached the point that sergeants are trained for three to six months, and after that he serves six to nine months. During this period, he can only be taught to shoot and drive a car.
But you can also teach a bear to shoot, and you cannot make a squad leader out of him during this time. What kind of authority is there among subordinates.
The salary of contract sergeants differs little from region to region and amounts to about 12 thousand rubles. In many cities, the wives of such military personnel earn 18 thousand and ask a reasonable question: why does their support and hope receive so little, disappearing in the service.
Therefore, contractors leave sergeant positions. So it turns out that there is no one to educate recruits.
