"Segodnya", N 21, October 30, 2001, p.2

THE DRAFT IN MOTHERS' EYES

by Igor Stadnik

The Union of the committees of soldiers' mothers of Russia (UCSMR) presented statistic data of its work for the past year. The requests and complaints of the people addressed to the committees of soldiers' mothers represent a sad picture of Russian Armed Forces. In 2000 the Union registered 147 cases of tortures, humiliations and extortions, 206 cases of illegal draft, 768 cases of diseases, traumas, injuries. Besides that, in the new year the stream of complaint has increased. For all the past year the Union received 1424 visitors and 246 letters, and for only 25 days of 2001 - 149 and 44 correspondingly.

Among other cases the case of Alexandr Komissarov was registered: he was liberated from captivity in 1999 and came to his unit in order to retire from the army oficially. The commanding officer demanded that he presented a certificate that he hadn't gone to the Chechen captivity of his own free will.

Soldiers' mothers noted a practice which was unknown even in Andropov times: militia's round-ups in the streets to send people of draft age to the army by force. That happened in Moscow, Saint-Petersbourg and other regions. Detained people who were subject to the decree on the draft were sent to units immediately without even permitting them to leave their work officially or to suspend temporarily their studies. In the past such things happened only in Azerbaijan during Karabakh war when men were caught in cinema and metro and sent to the front. The autumn draft brought a new portion of recruits who were in no way subject to the draft because of their state of health or family situation, and cases when young men under 18 were sent to units.

The UCSMR presented its evaluation of the death-roll in Russian troops in Chechnya - more than 6 thousand. As the responsible secretary of the Union Valentina Melnikova said to "Segodnya", the official statistics takes into account only those who were killed in battle, identified and brought from the battle-field, while the UCSMR takes into account everybody - all those who died in hospitals, in captivity, who died as a result of injuries after the retirement from the army etc. The force agencies usually consider evaluations of "sodiers' mothers" exaggerated, however, the official statistics doesn't deserve any credit at all: according to the data of the deputy chief of the General Staff Valery Manilov, as of August 3 - 2,585 servicemen from all force agencies were killed, and as of October 3 - only 2,472. At the same time the deputy minister for Interior Ivan Golubyev stated that only in the system of the Ministry for Interior 2,700 servicemen were killed. And traditionally the losses of the Ministry for De

fence are considered higher.