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Russia's Kasyanov wants to slash army conscription in half
April 24, 2003
AFP

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov said Thursday he wanted compulsory service in the army to be slashed in half to just one year as the government pondered plans to reform the nation's overstaffed and undefended armed service.

News agencies quoted Kasyanov as telling a government meeting on military staffing that he thought one year of service for call-ups to the army would be "the optimal option."

Russian teens conscripted into the army currently serve two years while those who join the navy serve three. Kasyanov made no mention of navy reforms on Thursday.

"We have to agree that that conscription has to be reduced," RIA Novosti quoted Kasyanov as telling his government.

However Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov reacted cautiously to Kasyanov's comments, saying military officials were prepared to look into the idea but would not support its implementation before 2007.

Reducing the time conscripts serve in the army can only be approved a broader "reform plan is implemented by 2007 in full," news agencies quoted Ivanov as saying.

But Ivanov came out in support of a plan to accept servicemen from former Soviet republics into the Russian army on a contract basis.

"I think this is a good idea," he said.

The government later Thursday was also expected to hear army reforms proposals backed by liberal forces in the lower house of parliament that want to see conscription cut back to six months.

The government is expected to decide which reform plan to formally support by June 1.

Cash-strapped Russia has struggled for over a decade over how to reform its bloated Soviet-era military which has twice been dealt a bloody nose by a small force of lightly armed guerrillas in separatist Chechnya.

Ivanov has gone back on plans to eliminate the unpopular army conscription before the end of the decade, instead proposing to set up a small fully professional force as the backbone of the country's defenses by 2007.

Ivanov has said a new professional force of some 166,000 servicemen -- just a fraction of the estimated 1.1 million currently enlisted in the armed forces -- "will become the main force of the army."

These troops will include 126,000 soldiers and sergeants in addition to 40,000 officers.

Ivanov said Russia could afford a smaller force that takes part in conflicts like the current three-and-a-half year war in Chechnya "because we are not currently facing a large-scale military threat."

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