Moscow, July 11, 1995

We, the undersigned citizens of Russian Federation, who must be drafted into Russian armed forces, declare about our conscientious objection. We stay on our legal right to refuse military service on reasons of conscientious - a right fixed in Article 59 of Russian Constitution.

In spite of this, military recruitment offices in fact deny our constitutional right, referring to absence of law on alternative civilian service.

We insist on the soonest adoption of the law on alternative civilian service. However, we need not any law, but only that one which would respond to the following key demands:

- alternative service must be really civilian one, it must not be connected in any case with armed forces, military structures and institutions;

- right to refuse military service must be recognized as an everybody's civil right and not as a right belonging only to some determined categories of citizens, for example to the believers of certain confessions;

- no commission has possibility to judge about the sincerity of a draftee's convictions and, therefore, they should not have any right to refuse granting alternative civilian service.

We realize our risk to be criminally persecuted and punished. Our step is not only an individual ethical, philosophical or religious choice, but a decisive collective action in spirit of Ghandi-style political non-violence aimed to the soonest adoption of the law on alternative civilian service.

Maksim KOSTJURIN, Jurij KUROCHKIN, Oleg ASTASHKIN, Sergej KIRILIN, Nikolaj GORSHKOV, Aleksej IVANOV, Sergej DOROSHIN, Ivan SOROKIN, Andrej TOROPOV, Nikolaj VASILJEV, Andrej ANDREEV, Pavel MARTYNOV, Aleksej KOSENKOV, Pavel JAKUBENKO, Vladimir AGEENKOV, Aleksej TIMOFEEV, Ilja KOSHKIN, Aleksej SIROTIN, Aleksandr ANTIPOV.