Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 29 – As part of its
program to restore Soviet-era practices of pre-induction military training,
something the LDPR has been pressing for since last year, the Russian defense
ministry has announced plans to create a new militarized youth movement that
will provide military training to young people before they reach draft age.
On the one hand, such a program will
help the Russian armed services by ensuring that draftees will know something
about military standards before they report for duty. And on the other, it will
give the regime yet another force it can use either to drain off energy from
other paramilitary groups in Russia or alternatively to fight them or others in
the streets.
Yesterday, Defense Minister Sergey
Shoygu told a meeting of 500 delegates from 85 regions at Moscow’s Patriot Park
that he and his ministry are committed to establishing “hundreds of centers of
patriotic training and hundreds of centers of Young Army Men throughout the
country” (function.mil.ru/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12086091@egNews).
“We will do everything in order that
you will be the strongest, the most intelligent, the most handsome and what is
the chief thing the most worthy citizens of our country,” Shoygu said, via a
system of military-sports competitions, clubs and spartakiads of various kinds
of military-related skills (graniru.org/War/Draft/m.251748.html).
A week ago, the defense ministry
said that the Young Army movement would be organized over the course of the
summer and that it would be fully operational by September 1. It added that its
members would study “the foundations of tactical operations and the military
history of Russia” (graniru.org/War/Draft/m.251532.html).
A defense ministry source told the
Grani.ru portal that “’the Young Army’ will have a full-scale
military-patriotic and military-sports program” and that its members would
practice shooting skills with pneumatic weapons.”
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