Cemetary | Campbell: On September 6th hope died for the Farhudtinov family. | 00:06:00 |
| Mrs Farhudtinov: To Almaz from Alma. I love you like a brother. | 00.11.00 |
| Their only son Almaz was killed in a skirmish with Chechen rebels in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was conscripted just days after he turned 18, and after a few weeks training he was sent to war and a needless death. | 00.19.00 |
Photos of Almaz/Mrs Farhudtinov | Mrs Farhudtinov: Here is Almaz, right after he finished school. | 00.35.00 |
| Campbell: How old is he? | 00.43.00 |
| Mrs Farhudtinov: After school, seventeen years old. And this is the last photo we have of him. It was taken by the Draft Centre on June 15. | 00.45.00 |
| Campbell: And then he went to the army? | 01.00.00 |
| Mrs Farhudtinov: Yes, he was there for two months and there isn't a single photo of him in uniform. | 01.02.00 |
Close up Mrs Farhudtinov/ photo of Almaz | I knew people died for the motherland in the Second World War but what did he die for? I can't understand. | 01.07.00 |
Map of Russia/soldiers marching/parade | Campbell: Russia's youth is once more being called to war.
This was Almaz's unit in his home town of Kazan in central Russia. All the recruits are conscripts. | 01.24.00
01.31.00 |
| Byrne: From the ages of 18 to 27 every russian male is subject to call up. Those who cannot avoid the draft spend two years in grim, impersonal institutions that at best are brutal and at worst fatal. | 01.47.00 |
Prytkov reads papers | Fresh conscripts are not supposed to be sent to war zones, but as the deputy commander, Lieutenant Colonel Pavel Prytkov acknowledged, it happens all the time. | 02.07.00 |
Prytkov and Campbell in front of tank | Prytkov: This is a great stupidity - I can't find another word on the part of the commanders to take these decisions despite the regulations and even the decree of the president saying soldiers can't be sent to war without three months training. | 02.18.00 |
Soldiers go through their paces | Campbell: Russia's military is now in such a shambles that rules count for little, and conscripts are paying the price. | 02.38.00 |
Campbell | These recruits have been drafted into the interior ministry which means technically they're police. But because Russia refuses to call its internal revolts wars, insisting they're criminal acts, it's these police conscripts who form the front line against armed rebel soldiers. | 02.46.00 |
Artillery weapons firing/tanks | This is what Russia calls a police operation. | 03.09.00 |
| Since August Russia has been fighting revolts in its volatile southern Islamic republics of Dagestan and Chechnya. | 03.18.00 |
| The extent of fighting has now drawn in the army as well as police. Ground troops backed by the airforce have been mounting punitive strikes on Chechnya, prompting more than 200,000 civilians to flee for their lives. | 03.28.00 |
Archival footage of war scenes | The military was once revered. The Red Army was the expression of the Soviet Union's status as a super power. The people honoured it for saving them from the Nazi invasion. It was every youth's patriotic duty to serve in it. | 03.54.00 |
Wounded soldier | The post Soviet Russian military has no such image. It is under funded, demoralised and brutalised, the only thought that most young Russians have is how to avoid being part of it. | 04.14.00 |
Soldiers' Mothers meeting | Campbell: Every Monday hundreds come to an organisation that gives free advice on how to dodge the draft. | 04.31.00 |
| Campbell: Called Soldiers' Mothers, it tells them how to gain medical exemptions or use legal challenges to overrule a call up. | 04.45.00 |
Melnikova and a mother | Valentina Melnikova helped form Soldiers' Mothers ten years ago when her son turned 18. | 04.54.00 |
| Mother: I believe that he has a deformed spinal column but they aren't interested in this. | 05.03.00 |
| Melnikova: I don't care what they think. When do you stop to measure your children with a State ruler? I see a think, pale, miserable young man. I just want to take him to a gastroenterologist and an orthopaedic surgeon for an x-ray. That's what I want to do. | 05.13.00 |
| Campbell: Valentina believes the military simply cannot be trusted with the lives of Russia's youth. | 05.34.00 |
| Melnikova: The deployment of our troops in Afghanistan showed me there is no proper military in this country ... that they don't understand any military problems and are ready to kill and send others to die just for the sake of some moronic ideas. | 05.41.00 |
Tanks roll along street/ woman with photos | Campbell: Soldiers' Mothers came to prominence in the first Chechen war, a savage 20 month conflict from 1994 to '96, that claimed 80,000 lives. Women braved minefields, gun fire and a hostile Russian military to march into Chechnya and literally rescue their sons. | 06.06.00 |
| Woman: Every mother thinks her son is the best - and I think he's the best - intelligent and tender. What will happen to him now? What will he look like if he comes back alive from this slaughter? | 06.25.00 |
Soldiers' Mothers office | Campbell: Today it uses formidable persistence to protect young soldiers, and woe betide any officer they find breaking the rules. | 06.44.00 |
Woman in red on phone | Woman: It's as if he's disappeared from the face of the earth. No, if he had been stationed in Dagestan, near Chechnya we could have supposed he was in Chechen captivity. But because he was in Irkutsk we can hardly think so. I'll write another letter to the Interior Minister now - let me write it down. | 06.52.00 |
Melnikova in her office | Melnikova: Now the numbers are huge ... our people in the hospitals say that there are at least two hundred dead counting the militia, and there are very many wounded - 600 people and more. Nobody can count them precisely. | 07.14.00 |
Video of military violence | Campbell: It's not simply the risk of being sent to war that frightens the mothers and soldiers. It's this. | 07.43.00 |
| Brutality in the army and interior ministry is out of control. This video caused outrage when it was broadcast. The sergeants who carried out the beatings were jailed. | 07.56.00 |
| But the most shocking part was the banality of their violence. The sergeants were so used to beating their men, so confident they would never be punished, that they recorded the beatings themselves. | 08.10.00 |
| It was for a souvenir video of their time in the army. | 08.21.00 |
Melnikova | Melnikova: What is happening in the army now is called crime. Grave or not - with grave consequences or without - it's still a crime. I can guarantee you that every young man who finds himself in the army is subjected to torture and abuse to a certain degree. | 08.30.00 |
Sasha at Soldiers' Mothers office | Campbell: Many who are drafted find it impossible to stay. Nineteen year old Sasha has just deserted from his unit in Moscow after repeated beatings. He is the third conscript to flee the unit in one month. If he is caught, he will face up to a year in detention on top of the rest of his service. His one chance is Soldiers' Mothers. | 08.57.00 |
| Melnikova: Tell me who is doing this - is it your fellow soldiers, sergeants, officers? It will be very useful to know. | 09.19.00 |
| Sasha: It happens at every level. | 09.32.00 |
| Campbell: Sasha tells her how the older soldiers in his unit use force to extract money from conscripts. | 09.34.00 |
| Melnikova: And what if you don't have the money? | 09.40.00 |
| Sasha: Well, you get beaten up. | 09.43.00 |
| Melnikova: Have you had any grave consequences - were you beaten on the head? | 09.52.00 |
| Sasha: Yes, it happened, but they don't leave any traces. | 09.58.00 |
| Melnikova: There will be traces. He should have a brain scan when he goes to hospital. | 10.00.00 |
| Campbell: Valentina insists his case is typical. | 10.07.00 |
Melnikova | Melnikova: Why do they leave their units? Because they are threatened with being hanged or raped - because they feel they can starve to death - because they are not given medical help or perhaps something happens in the family that requires their presence, but they are not allowed to go. | 10.12.00 |
Soldiers marching/ Prytkov | Campbell: But serious abuse is not universal. Lieutenant Colonel Prytkov prides himself on looking after his conscripts. | 10.37.00 |
| Prytkov: As to other units ... I served in other units too, and they were different - they were worse. Here we manage to maintain the discipline by keeping in touch with the parents. Most of the boys here are from the region - from Tartarstan - and we meet the parents regularly. We either meet them personally, or write to them - and once in three months invite the parents - and we have a day of ‘open doors' - meeting and exchanging opinions. It helps us a lot. | 10.45.00 |
Soldiers queue up/ barracks | Campbell: But even with good will, the base resembles a prison. | 11.32.00 |
| The facilities are minimal, the rooms overcrowded and the administration under funded. Russia still has the largest military in Europe. But its numbers have come to mean weakness not strength. Only ten per cent of its 800,000 troops are regarded as combat ready. | 11.42.00 |
Soldier digs in garden | This is now a universal task across the military; growing vegetables to supplement starvation rations. It is a sad and sorry contrast to former glories. | 12.07.00 |
Campbell in front of tank | The simple fact is that Russia can't afford to even feed a military this large, let alone give it proper equipment or training. It is simply too big to be an effective fighting force. In battle it sacrifices its soldiers and wreaks destruction without reward. | 12.20.00 |
| What's more this policy of mass conscription, isn't just illogical, it's illegal. | 12.36.00 |
Apartment building/ Tolga cuts hair | Every week Tolya Pushkov exercises his constitutional right to choose community service over military duty. | 12.48.00 |
| He visits old women and cuts their hair. He's often the only person who ever does anything to help them. | 12.58.00 |
| Tolya: Alternative service is for people who are patriots too but they can help in some other way. They have talents and they can be useful in other ways without joining the army. | 13.07.00 |
| Campbell: But Tolya's work is so far an unsuccessful protest. The Constitution guarantees that conscientious objectors can't be drafted. But the military refuse to recognise alternative service schemes and the parliament refuses to enact them. So Tolya remains liable for call up. | 13.34.00 |
| Tolya: There is no law, but it is in the Constitution - so there are grounds for a court case. The problem is to get your case proven. | 13.53.00 |
Soldiers train | Campbell: Over the next few months, about 160,000 more young people will be called up. | 14.15.00 |
| Those who can't prove they are medically unfit or find some other way to avoid the draft, may end up in the hell of Russia's internal wars. | 14.24.00 |
| President Yeltsin has promised repeatedly to end mass conscription and to create a professional army. Like most promises, it has gone nowhere. | 14.38.00 |
| Russia continues to blunder on with the same senseless and brutal policies it has followed for years. | 14.50.00 |
| And young men, young boys, will pay with their lives. | 14.59.00 |
Photo of Almaz/ Mrs Farhudtinov | Mrs Farhudtinov: He was always smiling ... he never had conflicts with anyone. | 15.07.00 |
| Campbell: Is every day hard? | 15.13.00 |
| Mrs Farhudtinov: Of course it is hard, because we did everything together. We put this wallpaper up together ... we planted vegetables together - it is always in front of my eyes. | 15.15.00 |
Farhudtinovs at the cemetery | Now we can only go to his grave to look and remember. Nothing is left except photographs. We only have one request - let it never happen again, so no more mothers have to endure this. | 15.32.00 |
ends |
| 15.48.00 |
| Credits Reporter ERIC CAMPBELL Camera DAVID MARTIN Editor GARTH THOMAS Producer VIACHESLAV ZELENIN
ABC Australia c.1999
|
|