10:00, 3 April 2014

Chechen Military Commissariat awaits instructions from Russian General Staff to draft locals into army

Conscripts. Photo provided by the press-service of Ministry of Defence of Russia, http://recrut.mil.ru

Till present, the issue of sending Chechen conscripts to serve in the Russian army is open, since the Chechen recruitment office has not yet received the appropriate instructions from the General Staff. Chechen local residents express different opinions in regard to the possible draft of local youth into the Armed Forces of Russia.

Parents of Chechen conscripts express their concerns about possible harassment of future soldiers. Meanwhile, many young people say they want to serve in the army.

It should be noted that since 1992, Chechnya did not hold any large-scale recruitment to the Russian army. In the autumn of 2001, Chechnya held an experiment to recruit 70 young men for regular-term military service. All of them were sent to serve in the sports squadron of the motorized rifle brigade stationed in the Moscow Military District. However, several months later, all conscripts from Chechnya were returned home because of many conflicts with colleagues and officers of the military unit.

Author: Muslim Ibragimov, Alexander Ivanov

Source: CK correspondents