Young men from Chechnya not called up to Russian Army again

Like in previous years, the autumn call-up in the Chechen Republic completed with medical examination of potential recruits and registration of young men above 18 years old in military records. Recruits from Chechnya were not called up to the Russian Army again.

"In the republic, the autumn conscription campaign is at its end; however, we have not sent a single recruit from our republic to serve in the Armed Forces. The fact is that the Republic's Military Commissariat must obtain the appropriate allotment list from the headquarters of the Military District. This year, like previous years, we received no instructions to send a certain number of recruit to serve," the Chechen Military Commissariat reported.

"Our recruits will be enrolled in the reserve," the Chechen Military Commissariat has noted.

At present, according to the Republic's Military Enlistment Office, the contingent of military age young men includes about 7000 persons.

Earlier, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, Ombudsperson in the Chechen Republic, advocated for sending of Chechen young men to the Russian Army. The Ombudsperson expressed his opinion that Chechen conscripts should serve in the armed forces of the country, "and the General Headquarters should make every effort to help young men from the Chechen Republic join its ranks without any problems." Nurdi Nukhazhiev also urged to cease all provocations around the issue.

Meanwhile, in 2007, when it was reported that Chechen young men would be called up to serve in units of the Russian Army, deployed outside the republic, protest actions were held in Grozny. At that time, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, Ombudsperson in the Chechen Republic, and MP Magomed Khambiev, ex-Minister of Defence of Ichkeria, severely criticized the idea to call up Chechen young men to the Armed Forces.

The last large-scale call-up of citizens of the Chechen Republic to serve in the armed forces was held in 1991, before the collapse of the Soviet Union. After that, a limited number of conscripts from Chechnya served in the Russian military units; however, with the beginning of the first military campaign in the republic, the call-up was completely stopped.

The media widely discussed unconfirmed information about "a secret directive of the General Headquarters", which allegedly recommended not to call up young men from the Chechen Republic to the army. Representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) denied the information that residents of the Caucasus would not be called up to the armed forces. And the Russian General Headquarters stated that no reductions of the number of conscripts from the NCFD (North-Caucasian Federal District) were planned; however, the so-called "Caucasian divisions" would not be formed in the Russian Army.

In 2002, there was an attempt to resume the practice of sending young men from Chechnya to serve outside the region; however, the experiment failed. Chechen conscripts refused to comply with the officers' requirements, they had numerous conflicts with their colleagues, and the conscription was stopped again.

At present, only insignificant portion of the total number of recruits is sent to serve to units of the internal troops of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) "North" and "South" and to two motorized rifle brigades of the Russian MoD. All those units are deployed in the territory of the Chechen Republic.