#19 - RW 273
Noncombat deaths in Russian armed forces described
Trud
6 September 2003
Article by Vladimir Gavrilov:
"Noncombat Losses -- The Armed Forces Lose About 2,000 Servicemen Annually Because of Negligence, Hazing and Other 'Irregular' Factors"

A few days ago Chief Military Prosecutor, Col-Gen Aleksandr Savenkov, published the following data: about 1,200 soldiers, warrant officers and officers have been killed in 2003. But not in combat against Chechen fighters, not in a brutal clash with drug couriers who are attempting to carrying bags with heroin across the state border. Instead, they were killed because of factors that are very prosaic, but still no less terrible. More than a thousand lives of young men in military uniform have been lost in traffic accidents, "games" with weapons, barracks hooliganism, suicides and due to disregard of elementary safety requirements in handling combat equipment.

The whole country was rocked by the recent tragedy in the Barents Sea, where seven sailors went down in the icy depths along with the decommissioned nuclear submarine, while another two who escaped from it did not survive until their rescuers arrived. According to Aleksandr Savenkov, one of the culprits in the disaster has already been found. The prosecutor's office has filed a charge against Capt 2d Class Sergey Zhemchuzhnov, who was heading the operation to tow the K-159 to the disposal site. Most likely, he will have to answer for the violation of various technical standards. The punishment may be severe. But in any case you can no longer bring back the dead.

There will probably also be a trial for the flight director who for unclear reasons permitted the pilots of two military helicopters in the Far East to make a paired landing. As a result of this highly complex maneuver, the rotary-wing aircraft got their propellers caught in each other and crashed to the ground. The crews died an absurd, senseless death...

It is not by chance that I am focusing attention on accidents. Contrary to widespread opinion, they cost more servicemen's lives than anything else. Last year, for example, more than 1,200 soldiers and officers were killed in accidents. Approximately the same figure shows up in reports by the military prosecutor's office for 2001, 2000 and 1999.

Don't take it as sacrilege, but there is a certain pattern in such "stability." Maybe the whole point is that in recent years the Armed Forces have mostly struggled to survive. Military studies almost everywhere has boiled down to sitting in crowded classrooms in front of models of equipment and coloring topographic maps, while just a semblance of discipline has remained, supervision has become superficial, equipment has fallen into decay, and the institution of military mentors has yet to get off the ground. So nuclear vessels go to the bottom one after another, ammunition depots blow up, planes and helicopters crash, fighting vehicles burn in the pits, and motor vehicles fall apart. And when the causes of the accidents are investigated, it invariably turns out that the responsible individuals know their duties "in general outline," and carried out instructions and admonitions in approximate terms.

Some time ago two senior submarine officers were also killed in the Northern Fleet: Capt 2d Class Andrey Guminichenko and Capt 3d Class Vladimir Gartsev. They went out onto the top deck of a nuclear submarine during a storm in order to repair the mooring equipment -- even though instructions prohibited this in the strictest terms. As a result they were washed overboard into the icy water. An attempt to rescue them failed. Guilty parties, as usual, were found. But wives were left without husbands, children without fathers.

Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov was absolutely right when he declared that "all orders, instructions and admonitions must be treated with 100 percent seriousness. Otherwise sooner or later the kind of tragic consequences will occur in which innocent people are killed."

Now there is hope that the Armed Forces will finally emerge from a condition of "confusion and wobbling." The exercises that follow one after another and the conversion of constant-readiness units to a contractual mode of staffing not only improve their combat readiness but, according to the assurances of the Armed Forces commanders, strengthen discipline.

There is still a way to go, however, to the complete triumph of order in regard to regulations. There are still many instances of barracks hooliganism in the army, the navy, border troops and internal troops. This year 2,500 people have already been victims of hazing. Sixteen servicemen have died. Five others were killed by their own commanders. This is from the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office. Some experts consider the figures too low. In any case, 800 soldiers and officers died last year at the hands of their fellow servicemen.

"Nonregulation" treatment brings servicemen to death in various ways. It isn't always through physical violence with grave consequences. For example, Lt-Col Aleksandr Baranenkov, acting like a landowner with serfs, sent eight subordinates to work for an acquaintance of his at a dacha. After the soldiers dug a trench, Pvt Dmitriy Kisilev began to even out the walls with a shovel -- and the sides caved in. They were unable to get him out from under the mound of dirt in time...

Driven to extremes by abuse and beatings, soldiers sometimes pick up weapons. Then both the people in the right and the guilty become victims. We now hear no less than once a month about the latest incident in the army involving flight, shooting and often people killed. Then again, to be fair I want to point out that there were plenty of such incidents in the Soviet Army as well, despite its powerful political and party apparatus and total system of control. Back in my years as a lieutenant I was a member of a political-department commission that investigated an accident in the field-engineering battalion of the 16th tank division. A young soldier there, Sergey Kalinin, shot dead three fellow servicemen while on guard duty. We determined that the dead men had long abused the young fellow. They signed their own sentence when they forced Kalinin, who had returned from his post, to clean a toilet... with a toothbrush. But all this was openly stated at the session of the military tribunal, which took place right in the unit. The soldier got a relatively mild punishment -- three years' confinement. But those who liked to "teach a lesson" to the younger ones got quiet for a long time. I should add that every such episode was regarded as an exception. People from top to bottom were punished for them: from the division commander to the squad commander.

Now, though, one often gets the impression that the tragic consequences of hazing have turned into almost routine events. Moreover, an effort is made to mislead the parents of soldiers who die because of abuse, by faking the medical report. Or, conversely, an effort is made to chalk up crimes that have obviously been committed for other motives to hazing. For example, when border guard Oleg Protsenko deserted, armed with an automatic rifle, and shot five people dead, he was initially also declared to be a "hazing victim." And only later was it ascertained that the soldier, who killed himself while he was pursued, had long since decided to become a highway robber.

About 300 servicemen a year end their lives of their own accord. The reasons are varied. Officers and warrant officers get tired of the unsettled state of everyday life, the uncertainty about tomorrow, and the squabbles among servicemen. But first-year soldiers continue to account for 70 percent of suicides. And the commanders clearly are not up to combating this trend by themselves. What is needed are special procedures that were devised by psychologists and that help young guys adapt to the drastic transition from home to barracks. Such procedures have existed for a long time. Army doctors showed them to me back in 1994. But for some reason they are still not in much demand.

According to independent experts, we have lost more servicemen in the past three years than in the entire Afghan campaign. That doesn't include those killed in fighting in Chechnya, Tajikistan and Abkhazia. If the military reform currently under way can stop this continuous suffering and sequence of senseless deaths, then already for this reason no money should be held back from it.

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