Americans haven’t had a draft for over 40 years, but in Russia military service has been continuously compulsory. Enforcement of the draft has been lax enough to encourage many you Russians who feel they have better things to do skip time with the army. Future draft dodgers may not have such an easy time if the Army gets its way.

An increasing number of recruits are now skipping town to avoid the draft, with 5,849 going missing in spring 2008 and 8,195 disappearing in the same period this year.

But now the army’s big shots are saying they will find the deserters and clamp down on them.

“We don’t know where they disappear, in the Sorbonne or at grandmother’s dacha in the village,” the military’s head of organisation and mobilisation, Vasily Smirnov, told RIA Novosti. “But we will send lists of these citizens to law-enforcement agencies whose duties include searching and driving them into draft commissions.”

Prosecutions of runaways remain rare, with only 115 convictions last year and 127 in 2007, but authorities hope to use the full weight of the law behind their clampdown.

“If people have broken the law, and knew precisely what they were doing, then it will inevitably be followed with the corresponding punishment,” added Smirnov. (Moscow News)

Share This

We’ve recently taken note that beauty contests are becoming a common PR tatic with a growing number of organizations in Russia. Just last week, we reported a Miss Constitution day contest, and earlier this year a contest for the nuclear power industry employees. A reader recently called attention to an entry on the Russian Ministry of Defense web site. No dates, winner, or any other data is listed, but there are photos. One is presented here, and more can be found on the originating site. Here the west, these events have all but disappeared after being branded “sexist”. No such charges are made in Russia, where it can be argued that women are much more in control of social customs.

Today in Russan History

Share This