Russian soldiers escape from the army

Russian soldiers escape from the army: desertion is gathering more and more steam. Every day, there is a piece of news to say that soldiers steal guns and ammo and run away. Earlier, such events were called “local emergencies" when police officers and soldiers were ordered to find and seize the fugitives. The whole country carefully watched the development of those events. Now, such stories have aleady become everyday news.

People need real shows, preferably with lots of blood. Do you remember when two commandos escaped from the Air Force unit in the city of Ulyanovsk? The mass media paid a lot of attention to that story. Those guys killed nine people, but investigators did not come to any conclusions about what actually happened. The main thing is not to allow anything like that to reoccur; however, what happens in other places, this ain’t our business.

Moskovsky Komsomolets and Izvestia newspapers returned to the subject again and decided to find out in their today’s issues what causes Russian soldiers to run away.

“It is about time the army should be put in quarantine, as we have an impression that soldiers become sick with mass insanity, - Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote. Armed deserters have shot two officers and two police officers this week. One of the deserters shot himself, and two others were killed while being captured. The total list of victims is seven people. The ease at which soldiers can steal arms is really striking, as well as the way they leave their positions: as if they were not on army bases, but in some public thoroughfare.”

Izvestia tried to find social reasons for such tragedies. The newspaper wrote that 44% of conscripts never work or studied anywhere after they finished school. Ten percent have previous convictions, and 21% have an incomplete or secondary education. Military psychologists write that such tragedies will inevitably repeat in the future, taking into consideration the fact that the Russian defense department does not seem to be willing to deal with army crimes.

Not only common soldiers escape, but even those that serve in the army on an contractual basis, those that took the decision to serve. Needless to mention that no one forced them to serve. Citizens of Tskhinvaly (the capital of South Osetia republic) saw a group of Russian deserters on Monday morning, not far from the city: the soldiers escaped from a Russian peacemaking detachment. They were armed with two machine guns, ten grenades, and 500 bullets. All of the seven were junior lieutenants on contractual army service.

Yegor Belorus PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov