The glorious and honorable russian army

[Winston]

I was talking about the portrait that Asher posted.

[Axxaer]

... I know ... Did I say something wrong?

[Winston]

No, but if you must know, your open fascination with gory pictures could be perceived as a little disturbing.

[Asher]

It's no worse than watching the American Idol auditions

(which I love)

[Vince278]

I may have misunderstood earlier.

[Az]

Man, at first I wanted to post a remark on how long does it take for news to get from Russia to the west, then I reminded myself that it took quite the time to make this a national news story in Russia, as well.

Anyway, Russia's conscript army is ****. They basically draft whatever they can get their hands on, including kids with criminal records. All the rich and influential get their kids out of the draft - and as long as there is no public campaign of humiliation against this, nothing is going to change.

A good conscript army takes a lot of effort in terms of care and organization. It can be a great tool for social engineering ( like it is here, to this very day, even though it's worse now), or it can be a black hole.

[Pekka]

oh yeah that case was horrible. Truly disgusting. It's sad that many Russian youngsters have to worry about dealing with possible physical harm and 'bullying' when they enter the service. I don't know why that is. Low morale of few people? I don't know. I guess it's one of those things where you have these unspoken traditions, where older ones (higher ranking) do these things, these pranks, except that they have gotten a bad twist along the way and it has gotten to this point and sometimes few individuals really take it too far.

That's how I would see it, without knowing. It's like what every army has, the newbies getting a little pounding, but this time it be very physical one and has gone totally wrong. These things seems to be happening there every now and then, the cases where it goes TOO freaking far. We've had many incidents and have every year, where a soldier escapes and crosses the border, usually still armed and not wanting to be caught even by our authorities, thinking they will be sent back. Which is what unfortunately does happen. After a struggle and sometimes a gunfight. We've had some citizens shot near the border as well, when a soldier has escaped and has been in big distress and afraid etc...... I guess they have been target of bullying to the caliber where they see they have to do that or a suicide.

We SHOULD grant them asylum, after all they won't get away from it, I mean what do you think will happen, of course we send them back and their service isn't done yet, so they most likely get punished and then back to service. But it's not a normal matter, they are offcially soldiers, we can't just keep them here. That would be a... serious conflict of interests. Just like they can't 'not send' our soldiers. They'd have to. It's totally reasonable, however that of course overrides the human thing.

This particular case raised hell in Russia though.. there were lots of people angry about this case. I mean, no wonder, but they really did get angry about this. Would you feel good about your kid going to an army that has a reputation of these kind of things? I think not. Plus it adds to the pressure that some might be going on their way to fight the Chechens etc..

[VetLegion]

What puzzles me is why the Russian authorities tolerate this bull**** in a situation where country's population is shrinking by, what, half a million a year? Is someone trying to depopulate Russia on purpose

[Axxaer]

I blame all those mail-a-bride services, you know like 'From Russia with love'. If they're going to just send all their prime cattle overseas, then it's their own fault!

[Arrian]

Bullying? BULLYING?. That's sadistic torture.

That's awful.

The head of the Russian Army makes Rummy look saintly with that "it's not big deal" line.

-Arrian

[MikeH]

Did the Russian minister say it was battle hardening the conscripts?

[Arrian]

Different and you know it.

-Arrian

[Wycoff]

Seeker,

You forgot to add: "A country that has turned one of the greatest cities in the Baltic (Königsberg) into the cesspool of Europe."

[Solver]

An interesting thing in the context is that the list of possible excuses from draft was recently reduced in Russia. They're just looking to draft more.

Here in Latvia, we had a conscript army until very recently... but even then it was known pretty well for really testing potential conscripts medically. People with bad health were declared unfit for duty and that was it. In Russia, unfortunately, many illnesses don't exempt you from military duty, but rather put you at a great risk when you do it.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by Seeker

1. What country is seeing the largest nazi movement of modern times?

The whole Russian Nazi thing is, on the face of it, insane.

Then again, you get those gay fascists, so I suppose anything's possible.