Chechnya abounds in recruits, local military commissariats report

Officials from the Russian Ministry of Defence (MoD) refute the data that residents of the Caucasus will not be drafted into the army. It also reported that the Chechen Republic has much more potential recruits to the army and military schools than required by the delivered quota.

"The information, voiced by some media that now residents and natives of the Caucasus living there and in other regions of Russia will not be recruited to the army, does not correspond to reality," said Colonel Igor Konashenkov, spokesman of the MoD.

"We've held an internal investigation regarding this statement, which had allegedly been made by the military commissar of the Chelyabinsk Region; and it turned out that he said nothing of the sort," Colonel Konashenkov told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

Lieutenant Colonel Igor Gorbul, head of the press service of the Southern Military Region (SMR) also expressed his surprise at the statement allegedly made by Nikolai Zakharov, military commissar of the Chelyabinsk Region, and later replicated by media. "Nothing of this sort happens in our Region. Everything is going according to the plan. The drafting is underway in all the republics. A small exception is Chechnya, where conscripts are left to serve within the republic," Colonel Gorbul told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"Last year we called up 100 recruits. All of them are serving in the battalion 'Sever' (North). There were much more volunteers, but we were given a quota; and we drafted the respective number. In three months more than half of these guys wrote applications about their will to switchover to contractual service," Khadizhat Gerikhanova, a commissariat employee in Chechnya, told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"Many are willing to study at military schools. But this year they sent us a quota only for four persons - to the Investigatory Department of the Moscow Military University. We selected them on the competitive basis," adds her colleague Musa Soltamuradov.

He treated the information that guys from the Caucasus would not be recruited as "an obvious absurdity."