Russian conscripts are forced to sign contracts and go to Rostov – human rights activists
Moscow - Kyiv, February 4 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Stamm) - Human rights activists are recording an increase in the number of complaints from conscripts who are being persuaded to sign contracts to be sent to the Rostov region. Trying to dissolve them, they face pressure, but they are afraid to go to the border with Ukraine, writes RBC.
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Two servicemen of the 2014th military base of the Russian Ministry of Defense stationed in Abkhazia [formerly the 7st Maykop brigade], who returned from a business trip to the Rostov region at the end of 131, turned to the military prosecutor of the Southern Military District with a request for assistance in terminating contracts (copy of application available to RBC). They do not want to continue serving after the deployment, soldiers told RBC, who asked not to use their last names.
In August last year, the commander of the artillery battalion, according to them, persuaded them, along with other conscripts from the rocket battery (it is armed with the Grad multiple launch rocket systems), to sign two-year contracts. At the same time, the commander verbally promised that they would be demobilized, as they should have been, in December 2014, and the fact that the contract expires only in 2016 is a formality. They will be sent to maneuvers in Crimea, and upon their return they will be able to resign in December without any problems, having received payments due to contract soldiers for the duration of the exercises.
However, instead of Crimea, the soldiers spent several months in the Rostov region. The artillerymen did not say what the need for their presence in the region was. “We have signed non-disclosure documents,” the soldiers emphasize. But RBC managed to find photographs of soldiers and commanders of the 7th base rocket battery, collected on Russian social networks by Ukrainian volunteers from the Informnapalm website team. In them, artillerymen and their commanders pose against the background of Grads with ammunition near the border with Ukraine (judging by the geolocation tags). Among these military men there are two interlocutors of RBC.
Compulsion to sign two-year contracts for transfer to training in the Rostov region with an informal promise to dismiss early (which is not always fulfilled) occurs in other units of permanent combat readiness, organizations of soldiers’ mothers from different regions report, RBC reports.
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