MOSCOW, JULY 15 (FROM RIA NOVOSTI CORRESPONDENT ALEKSEI MESHKOV) -- In line with the presidential decree On Transfer to Staffing Soldiers and Sergeants Personnel of Russia`s Armed Forces on Professional Basis, Russia`s Defense Ministry is finalizing a corresponding program to submit it to the government for consideration by this autumn, deputy chief of the Organizational and Mobilization Department of Russia`s General Staff Major General Valery Astanin reported at a briefing in the Defense Ministry today.

He pointed out that as many as 231,000 people (among them 115,000 women) serve on contract in Russia`s Armed Forces in the ranks of soldiers and sergeants, this is about 25 percent of the total strength of soldiers and sergeants.

As Astanin said, to draw a soldier for a contract service will cost 3.5 times more that to call up an ordinary conscript. At the same time "the performance of a contract soldier is not so high as it was expected in the military department." Astanin believes that this is mainly related to the fact that people come to serve not due to their conviction but "sooner due to a hopeless situation." Now they start to leave the Armed Forces because of the absence of housing, inappropriate level and undue payment of monetary allowances, problems with jobs for members of their families, As many as 17,000 military who have served on contract have annulled their contracts, their number may increase in 1998.

Really assessing Russia`s economic and financial state, the Defense Ministry believes that "it would be hardly possible to transfer to staffing the soldiers and sergeants personnel on contract from 2000," he said. That`s why the Russian Defense Ministry offers to first of all transfer units and detachments making up peacekeeping forces, as well as forces intended to fulfill tasks under the situation of armed conflicts, to contract service.

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Johnson's Russia List

#1052

16 July 1997

djohnson@cdi.org