November 01, 2019

One-way ticket: Russian servicemen trapped in the Army

topic:	Human Rights
located:	Russia
editor:	Igor Serebryany

Military officers who opted to serve under a contract with the Defense Ministry and later changed their mind find out there is no way out, Novaya Gazeta weekly reported on Monday. 

The newspaper interviewed a lieutenant, Victor Dey, who was forced to sign a 5-year contract with the Defense Ministry while studying in Peter the Great Missile Academy. After graduation, one year into service, he asked his superiors to dismiss him from service - only to find out there was no exit.

Dey's commanders threatened him with criminal prosecution for violating the contract he had signed a few years ago. The commander cited the law "About military service" which, however, does not prohibit a serviceperson from quitting should he choose it.

"Duties and rights of the military officers have been highly confusing because the law doesn't specify them precisely", a member of the presidential Human Rights Council Sergei Krivenko says.

Unlike the Civil Code, the law about military service does not contain a clause about the terms in which the contract could be cancelled unilaterally.

"A military service contract is not the same as a work agreement. Working relations are regulated by the Labor Code. Any employee might quit a job a month after filing the letter of resignation. Military contracts are the internal deals of the Defense Ministry, so the minister has the power to dismiss an officer or keep him in service indefinitely", Krivenko says.

Formally, the Ministry does nothing illegal because a potential officer is supposed to understand what obligations he takes up when signing a contract.

"In peacetime, the officers sign the contracts for sheer self-interests like a prospective to obtain free housing after 20 years in the Army and the right for retirement upon turning 45. So, normally, people who pursue these goals never ask for dismissal", Krivenko notes.

The problem occurs among the officers who attended military officer schools because they believed in "national spirit", "military fame" and other idealistic concepts.

"Those people often become disappointed after facing the realities of military life, and they lose motivation to stay in the Armed Forces. What the Defense Ministry can do with them? In wartime, the barrier troops could be deployed. In peacetime, the higher officers play a role of the anti-retreat units", Krivenko sneers.

If a person is unaware of the consequences, this is not an excuse, chairman of the National Association of the Reserve Officers Vladimir Bogatyrev stresses. "Whatever a person signs, be it a loan application or military contract, he must understand what he signs up for. It's too late to lament about the wrong choice once you are in", he says.

Bogatyrev agrees that much depends on the expectations of a young man. "If a young man studies in a regular military college, he usually doesn't expect a bed of roses ahead. But the students of the elite establishments like Dey may be unprepared for the real service conditions. Often, their wives insist on quitting service because they are unhappy with the prospect of spending many years in remote military settlements", Bogatyrev says.

The same week, a private in Zabaikalsk region in Siberia was shot and killed eight by his fellow servicemen and wounded two others.

According to his relatives, a 20-year-old had been bullied by his officers. Chairperson of the Soldiers' Mothers movement Valentina Melnikova does not rule out that the officers could take it out on the soldier just because of the officer's own disappointment with his job.

Between 2008 and 2014, there were no reports about such incidents, but lately, we hear about those frequently, she says. "The lull ended because of the influx of the commanders who served in Donbass and Syria. They brought in the frontline habits into the barracks, ending more or less liberal environment there", Melnikova says.

Besides, recently, the Defense Ministry has been busy with "geopolitical" tasks like countering the alleged NATO threat so it weakened control over junior officers in the interior military settlements.

"That has inevitably led to the conditions when the officers receive the freedom to behave as they wish, often rendering their soldiers actual slaves", Melnikova says.

Image: Vitaly V. Kuzmin/CC BY-SA 4.0