- Russia's top military prosecutor has shocked the country
by revealing that 46 soldiers - the equivalent of an average platoon -
died last week for non-combat related reasons.
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- Eight of the soldiers committed suicide and several had
to be shot by comrades to halt drunken and violent rampages. There were
two attempted suicides.
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- Russians have long known that their armed forces are
ravaged by appalling brutality, crime and bullying but these revelations
from General Alexander Savenkov have hit home particularly hard.
-
- His outburst has also been interpreted as a damaging
and personal attack on the Defence Minister, Sergey Ivanov, who is a hot
favourite to succeed President Vladimir Putin in 2008.
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- Mr Ivanov has claimed the number of suicides, accidental
deaths and murders in the army is decreasing but General Savenkov stated
the opposite. An expanded meeting of the country's military prosecutors
is to be held today in Moscow to try and understand why so many soldiers
are dying off the battlefield.
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- "Without exaggerating you can call that quantity
of peacetime deaths [46] a catastrophe," noted the daily Novy Izvestia.
It quoted Veronika Marchenko, the chairwoman of the Mothers' Rights Group,
which lobbies for better conditions in the army, as expressing little surprise
that 46 had died in one week. "Last week does not differ from any
of the other 52 which preceded it," she said. "They were exactly
the same."
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- General Savenkov said the large number of soldiers dying
for non-combat reasons was due to officers' unwillingness to deal with
their subordinates' problems because there was no culture of mentoring
or offering guidance. Instead young conscripts are subjected to systematic
hazing known, in Russia asdedovshchina, or "rule of the grandfathers".
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- Military service is obligatory and lasts two years. First-year
recruits are usually bullied by the second year ones who are known as "deds",
or grandfathers.
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- The bullying is sometimes so mentally and physically
harsh that many take their own lives. Earlier this year four soldiers hanged
themselves on the branch of a tree near their barracks. What drove them
to such extreme lengths remains unclear.
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- According to official figures, 376 soldiers died for
non-combat reasons between January and May of this year, of which 99 were
suicides. Last year the total number was 954 of which 246 took their own
lives.
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- The unofficial figures, however, are thought to be much
higher.
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- ©2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=647182
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