Soldiers from all over the world will soon be able to serve in the Russian army

The RF Ministry of Defence is working on the draft decree according to which foreign soldiers will be admitted to serve in the Russian army.

Information appeared on the site of the Ministry of Defence stating that citizens of any other country will soon be able to serve in the Military forces of Russia. However, the draft decree underlines the requirement to know the Russian language for serving in the Russian army. Moreover, the candidates in the age of 18 to 30 will have to undergo dactylograpgy.

Foreign citizens will have to sign the contract for five years, and not for three years, as is the case with the Russian conscripts. The draft decree states that military officers will get Russian passports at the expiry of the three-year term. Not to discount the possibility of such perspective to attract huge numbers of persons to Russia from the cross-border countries: Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, etc. Besides, during the period of service in the army soldiers will be accommodated, however, not in separate flats, but in hostels.

In addition, the payment to the contracted foreign conscripts will be similar to the wage of a Russian conscript amounting to 10-12 thousand roubles. At the expiry of the term in service the contracted conscript “may enter any national educational establishment for higher education on easy terms”, the draft order stipulates.

The contracted foreign conscripts may not expect to be awarded high ranking positions or titles. “We have never considered complementing the army with foreign citizens”, - clarified on 26 October Chief of the Organizational mobilization department Vasilij Smirnov. We are just talking about “positions of private soldiers and sergeants, and not more”.

However, apart from all such restrictions, experts are ambiguously assessing the idea of the Ministry of Defence. According to the words of Sergej Goncharov, the Chairman of the Association of the veteran group “Alfa”, the novelty has been introduced for making the service in the Russian army possible for “our brothers: Belarusians, Ukrainians, Moldavians”. “Don’t expect the flow of negroes with guns to Russia”, - stated Goncharov.

The expert considers that the authorities were forced to make such serious step of inviting foreign soldiers to serve in the Russian army because of the huge demographic collapse. “For the moment the situation is such that Russia is unable to collect the full composition of the army. Subsequently, it needs to outsource people for sealing the gaps”, explained Goncharov.

Vice-President of the Board of Military Experts, Major-General Aleksandr Vladimirov totally disagrees with Goncharov. “One can not think of a more stupid thing”, - the expert interrupted the correspondent of the newspaper “VZGLIAD”. Switching to an elevated tone, Vladimirov told, that “if he knew the author of the draft, he should be taken to court”.

The expert compared the potential of the contracted Russian army with “Taliban”. “They will recruit gangsters and will get a terrorist group – clarified vice-president. – All such actions will lead to the collapse of Russia, in particular because of liberalism”. According to the words of Vladimirov, recruiting of soldiers is clearly indicating the level of the “morals of the authorities and love of the motherland”.

To the question, whether the document is directed to the invitation of soldiers from the CIS countries, the expert responded that it might be the case, but it might be even worse. “If Tajik men, who cannot do anything else except sweeping the streets, are allowed to serve in the army, then in a year or so there will be over a million of them in the country. It will be a real preponderance, degradation. Just think, in a certain period of time they will be granted citizenship and will become legal Russians”, - concluded Vladimirov.

Material has been prepared by the Centre of Geopolitical Studies with reference to the article from «ВЗГЛЯД» of 26 11 2010

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