Russia: Possibility of alternatives to or deferment of military service; possibility of conscientious objection, particularly in the context of the Chechen war; any difference in the conscription process for ethnic minorities, particularly Germans; changes in the conscription process and the treatment of draft evaders due to the Chechen war

Sources consulted by the Research Directorate indicate that although the Russian constitution provides a guarantee of the right to alternative service for conscripts, no law on the implementation of that right has been passed (Canadian Jewish News 4 May 2000; WP 29 June 2000; CP 9 Nov. 2000; UPI 11 Nov. 2000. Moscow Helsinki Group 14 Feb. 2000). Despite the lack of alternative service legislation, pacifist groups estimate that some 1,500 requests for the right to alternative service are made annually (WP 29 June 2000).

The lack of an implementing law means that those who try to exercise their right to alternative service are generally turned down (CP 9 Nov. 2000). In February 2000, it was reported that a Jewish man from Kaluga province in Russia, Dimitri Neverovsky, was sentenced to two years' in prison under Article 328 of the Criminal Code for illegally evading military service as a consequence of his stated refusal to serve in the armed forces on the basis of the constitutional provision for alternative service (NYT 1 Feb. 2000; Embassy of Canada 22 Feb. 2001). A subsequent report indicates that Neverovsky was freed by court order after 146 days in jail pending a psychological assessment, but remained under investigation and was legally restricted to the city of Obninsk (WP 29 June 2000).

On the other hand, there have been instances in which the right of refusal to serve on religious grounds has been upheld by the courts: on 8 May 2000 AP reported that three Jehovah's Witnesses, Alexander Kalistratov, Alexei Miroshnichenko and Oleg Lipatov had been excused from military service on the basis of their religious convictions by courts in Gorno-Altai in Siberia, Krasnodar and Cheboksary (AP).

An officer at the Canadian embassy in Moscow stated that:

there is still no federal law on alternative service for conscripts in Russia. The debate over alternative military service has been going on in Russia for 7 years now. A draft law was drawn up and submitted to the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma. The Duma turned it down in spring 1999. As a result, this legal vacuum creates chaos. Young men cite the Constitution's article to justify their dodging the draft. Some judges clear charges against draft dodgers, others do not. That's why cases like Dimitri Neverovsky's do happen in Russia (see above) (22 Feb. 2001).

A Russian media source consulted by the Research Directorate indicates that another draft law on alternative service has been prepared. According to an article in the 15 June 2000 issue of the Russian publication Izvestia:

A draft law "On the Alternative Civic Service", prepared by the Russian Defense Ministry and government executives has been submitted to the Presidential Administration. For seven years in consecutive Russia is trying to implement the Constitutional right of its citizens for the alternative service. There are no guarantees that this legislative "prolonged procedure" will not last years more.

In short, the latest variant does not interpret the alternative to the military service as a severe punishment for lack of patriotism. The draft law envisages not the work "as a civilian personnel of the Armed Forces" alone, but in "other state, administrative and municipal offices". Another novelty: the military are removed from any control over an "alternative" defender of the fatherland. On the federal level it is proposed to establish a Committee for Affairs of the Alternative Civic Service of the Russian government and attach it to the "local administrative body", right up to a village council. Enlistment offices are involved at the initial stage only, when a draftee writes an application of his unwillingness to serve in the army, and when retiring to the reserves, when a "laborer" is added to the military reserves.

A pacifist or any other ideological opponent to the army will have to serve four years outside his native region (the exterritorial principle), graduates will have to serve two years. If a person wishes to serve in the army system, the Emergency Situations Ministry of fire brigades, the term of service is correspondingly three years and a year and a half.

Outwardly everything will look as if one has been expelled for non-attendance. A soldier of the alternative service has not right to choose the place of the service, to dispute its longitude and latitude as well as the profession obtruded. Therefore, one takes a rucksack and goes, for instance, in a timber industry enterprise of the Siberian federal district. A village council there will add one to the registers and gives a job of a branch-cutter of the fourth level. The clothes is on the soldier, the food is also on him, the quarters present a corner or a dormitory room. The labor code is considered to be the field manual. It is prohibited to leave the territory of the work. Once a year one receives a 20-day vacation at home. Complaints of hardships and abuses should be given through court. A branch-cutter is undoubtedly an extreme position: one may work as an orderly at a mortuary, and as a "concrete mixer" to the construction battalion. Slavery toil is highly thought of everywhere in Russia.

What the kids will be like after such service is over? Authors of the draft remain silent about that. However, they assume that under circumstances of emergency and military situation all these alternatives should be quitted and "opponents" should be taken to the armed forces without any debates. Soldiers of the alternative service, lacking even the nuts and bolts of the military training are considered to be full-fledged soldiers in wartime. The mobilization plans do not envisage any "labor army" for them.

Finally, the procedure of disclosing those worthy of the alternative civic service: ""proofs on authenticity of one's convictions and confession" should be presented to the committee. For instance, hold one's hand over a candle until they start to believe. What else should be done?

Generally speaking, it all happens as usual. Apparently, this law draft is a derivation of Soviet convictions of the viciousness of the idea of any alternative to the military service itself: to defend fatherland with a broom in one's hand is not a profession.

Deferments or exemptions

A man is entitled to a two-year paternity deferral if he is married when he reaches conscription age, and his wife gives birth to a child, according to Flora Salikhovskaya, a spokeswoman for the Union of Right Wing Forces, a political group with representation in Russia's parliament (CP 9 Nov. 2000). A man is also entitled to an exemption from military service if he is the single father of a child under age three, or if the mother of his child is under age 18, or "considered unfit to cope alone" (NYT 30 Jan. 2000).

Student deferrals are available. According to the Canadian Jewish News of 4 May 2000, Russian citizens can receive exemptions from active military service

by attending university, where they complete some kind of "military instruction course." After graduation, they become part of the reserve corps, which is normally not called up for duty.

In the same vein, the New York Times of 30 January 2000 reported that

The easiest way to get out of the army is to study. Indeed, the incentive of avoiding the draft often encourages a sudden devotion to studies among 17-year-old males. In Moscow, for instance, where an estimated 50,000 young men were due to be processed last fall, an estimated 52 percent of draft-age men were exempted because they are enrolled in institutes and technical colleges where they take military courses that put them on an officer's track.

Other ways to obtain exemption from military service are to be employed at a "strategically crucial firm" or to be the only person available to look after an aged or invalid relative (Canadian Jewish News 4 May 2000; NYT 30 Jan. 2000).

According to Russian media reports, about 85 percent of draft-age Russian men are now legally exempt from the draft, due to health problems or eligibility for deferments on various grounds (Jamestown Foundation Monitor 5 Oct. 2000; Russia Today 28 Apr. 2000).

For Moscow's elite ... the city's forty-two universities and institutes with military departments (faculties that offer military courses) provide considerable opportunity for avoiding the draft. Some 52 percent of the city's draft age population is reportedly eligible for education deferments of one sort or another (Jamestown Foundation Monitor 5 Oct. 2000).

Methods of conscription

According to an officer at the Canadian embassy in Moscow, the following methods of conscription can be observed:

the militia (Russian police) conducts round-ups on the streets to send young men of draft age to the army by force (it's now happening in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other regions of Russia); sometimes militia agents raid Moscow school dormitories at night to recruit young men to send them to the army right from their beds; there are cases where people are sent to military units immediately without even permitting them to leave their work officially or to suspend their studies; there are also cases where people are sent to the army who are not subject to the draft because of their health problems or family situation; sometimes young men under 18 are sent to units. Draft evaders are put into prison under Article 328 of the Russian Criminal Code (can be sentenced to maximum 2 years in prison) (Embassy of Canada 22 Feb. 2001)

The Moscow Times of 7 February 2001 reported the case of Vasily Zaitsev, a 20-year-old man with health problems who was apprehended on a Moscow street by police who were looking for draft-dodgers. The police then:

... took him, along with two other men, to the local military commission, where he was put through a perfunctory medical examination. Draft officials would not listen to his claims of illness and refused to give him a chance to present the relevant medical documents. With no chance to appeal, he was assigned to a unit and handed his military ID.

Zaitsev was told that documents related to his medical condition were not in his file. He was permitted to return home that day on the pretext of packing his clothes and saying goodbye to his mother, and he did not return to the military commission the next day as ordered (ibid.). The Soldiers' Mothers' Committee maintains that the practice of sending young men to induction centres immediately, as was done with Zaitsev, is a violation of their legal right to appeal their local draft board's decision within ten days (ibid.).

Draft evasion

Media reports indicate that draft evasion is widespread in Russia (Canadian Jewish News 4 May 2000; CP 9 Nov. 2000; Jamestown Foundation Monitor 5 Oct. 2000; Moscow Times 7 Feb. 2001; Russia Today 28 Apr. 2000; UPI 11 Nov. 2000; WP 29 June 2000). Media reports consulted by the Research Directorate contain estimates of 32,000 (Jamestown Foundation Monitor 5 Oct. 2000) and 38,000 (Russia Today 28 Apr. 2000) draft-dodgers in Russia in the autumn of 1999, or 17 to 18.6 per cent of the conscripts for that year. Draft-dodgers numbered 19,600 in 1998 (Russia Today 28 Apr. 2000). In Moscow in 1999 there were 3,946 registered cases of draft-dodging, which led to 92 investigations and the conviction and imprisonment of seven draft-dodgers (ibid.). The Moscow district military commissar expected the city to produce only 5,000 conscript soldiers in the fall of 2000, despite its population of about 10 million people (Jamestown Foundation Monitor 10 Oct. 2000).

Many of those who evade military service do so by means of bribery, including techniques such as buying one's way onto the Red Army hockey team for US$10,000, and buying an internal passport stamp indicating completion of military service for US$3,000, or paying doctors to give them false medical certificates (CP 9 Nov. 2000; Canadian Jewish News 4 May 2000; Moscow Times 7 Feb. 2001; NYT 30 Jan. 2000; WP 29 June 2000).

Ethnic minorities

Regarding the procedure to conscript ethnic Germans or other ethnic minorities, either with regard to military service in general or with regard to service in Chechnya in particular, the Research Directorate has found no evidence among the sources it has consulted to suggest that it is any different from the procedure for ethnic Russians. A representative of the Moscow Helsinki Group stated that "by law the procedure of conscription is the same [for ethnic minorities and for ethnic Russians]; although, certainly, there is always a possibility that members of ethnic minorities would be treated in a humiliating manner by xenophobic officials in charge" (14 Feb. 2001).

An officer at the Canadian embassy in Moscow stated that "the method of conscription into the Russian Army is the same for all Russian citizens regardless of their nationality" (Embassy of Canada 22 Feb. 2001).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. Please find below the list of additional sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Associated Press (AP). 8 May 2000. "Russian Courts Allow Jehovah's Witnesses to Avoid the Draft." (NEXIS)

Canadian Jewish News. 4 May 2000. Lev Gorodetsky. "Many Russian Jews Are Dodging the Draft." (NEXIS)

Canadian Press (CP). 9 November 2000. Fred Weir. "Draft Dodgers Use All Available Means to Avoid Serving in Russian Army." (NEXIS)

Embassy of Canada, Moscow. 22 February 2001. Correspondence.

Izvestia [Moscow, in Russian]. 15 June 2000. Vladimir Yermolin. "A Punishment for Lack of Patriotism." (Agency WPS 19 June 2000/NEXIS)

Jamestown Foundation Monitor. 5 October 2000. "Russia's Fall Military Conscription Campaign Begins." (in CDI Russia Weekly 6 Oct. 2000) [Accessed 6 Feb. 2001]

Moscow Helsinki Group. 14 February 2001. Correspondence.

Moscow Times. 7 February 2001. Sarah Karush. "Army Traps Even the Unfit in its Draft Net." (in CDI Russia Weekly 6 Oct. 2000) [Accessed 6 Feb. 2001]

New York Times (NYT). 1 February 2000. "Russia's Corrupt Justice." (NEXIS)

_____. 30 January 2000. Celestine Bohlen. "Mothers Help Sons Outwit Draft Board in Wartime Russia." (NEXIS)

Russia Today. 28 April 2000. Vladislav Komarov. "Russia's Army Still Mired in Conscript Crisis." (in FreeRepublic.com 1 May 2000) [Accessed 16 Feb. 2001]

United Press International (UPI). 11 November 2000. "Duma Official Critical of Personnel Cutbacks in Russian Army." (NEXIS)

Washington Post (WP). 29 June 2000. Daniel Williams. "Where 'State Interests' Rule; Russia Uses Extralegal Methods to Punish Draft Dodgers, Others." (NEXIS)

Additional Sources Consulted

IRB databases

Unsuccessful attempts to contact four non-documentary sources