Russian news agencies have spread information that an additional mechanism is being discussed in the Ministry of Defense, which will solve the problem of the systematic shortage of recruits. This mechanism can be the recruitment of young people of military age who received Russian citizenship into the Russian army, and before they received it, they managed to serve in conscription service in the state from which they arrived in the Russian Federation. In other words, if a person has decided to change any of his citizenship to Russian, while at the same time at the age of conscription, then Russia can call this person for urgent service, even if he has already passed it abroad in due time. This method had both supporters and opponents. In this material we present the arguments of those and others.
A supporter of the idea of re-drafting for "new Russians" is a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Alexander Kanshin. In the joint venture of the Russian Federation, he holds the post of chairman of the Commission on problems of national security and socio-economic conditions of life of military personnel, members of their families and veterans. In his opinion, the idea of recruiting into the Russian army those who received a Russian passport and had already managed to serve in their homeland is reasonable. He compares the new Russian version with the Israeli one, recalling that all those who receive Israeli citizenship have to start their lives literally from scratch: all previous merits, including militarily, are often simply ignored by Israel’s authorities. by actually pushing a person to prove himself in a new homeland. According to Alexander Kanshin, the same practice could be introduced by Russia.
At the same time, supporters of the idea of re-drafting agree that it would be nice to consider not to appeal to young people who received a Russian passport if they did military service, for example, in the army of one of the CSTO states. Thus, it is emphasized that the members of such a structure as the Collective Security Treaty Organization, militarily perform similar tasks in the spirit of ensuring the security of the borders of the signatory states.
It should be emphasized that today with only one state that is part of the CSTO, there is an agreement that there should be no precedent for the so-called re-conscription. Speech in this case is about Tajikistan. However, there is another state with which Russia has a similar agreement, and which is not part of the CSTO. This is Turkmenistan. In all other cases, the possibility of re-calling when changing citizenship or obtaining a second citizenship is not yet regulated.
The point of view of the opponents of the new initiative of the Ministry of Defense of Russia is as follows. In their opinion, the new version of the law “On Military Duty and Military Service” may in one way or another frighten off young men of military age who have already served in the army abroad, and now want to become Russian citizens and get jobs in Russia. This may lead to the fact that the very young qualified specialists, about the involvement of which the representatives of the Russian authorities are talking about in the country, can abandon the idea of obtaining a Russian passport. After all, the desire to re-serve is not the whole of persons of military age who are seeking Russian citizenship.
To understand what is more - the advantages or disadvantages of the new initiative, coming from the main military department of the country, it is necessary to deal with the immigration issue. In other words, it is necessary to clarify the number of persons who have recently received a passport of a citizen of Russia - immigrants from other states. Thus, it will be possible to make a picture: what kind of state can become a real “donor” of draftees for the Russian army and can it.
If we consider the statistics of obtaining Russian citizenship by people from foreign countries for the last year, the following picture emerges. Russian citizenship or residence permit (official statistical services summarize both of these figures) received almost 30 thousand immigrants from Uzbekistan, 20 thousand - from Kyrgyzstan, 15 thousand - from Armenia, about 9 thousand from Azerbaijan, 5 thousand - from Georgia, about 2 thousand - from the Baltic states, about 1,5 thousand - from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
Experts explain the relatively low number of people who received a Russian passport or residence permit from Tajikistan and Turkmenistan by the fact that the majority of people from these former Soviet Republics (especially Russians by nationality) who were seeking to obtain a passport of a Russian citizen, arrived in Russia from 1992 to 2007 years
If we talk about the statistics of persons who received Russian citizenship or residence permit for the last year, in relation to the countries of so-called foreign countries, here China holds the first place (about 3 thousand people), Germany (about 1,9 thousand) holds the second place.
The statistics of Russian citizenship in recent years in Kazakhstan and Ukraine suggests that residents of these countries are less than before seeking to obtain Russian citizenship. The reasons are from “all who need it, have come a long time” to the improvement of the economic situation in these republics.
Let us return, however, to the “re-appeal” for the “new Russians”. The total figures for citizenship of Russia (not a residence permit) for the year are no more than 50-55 thousand people. How many of them are young people of draft age? Official statistics, unfortunately, does not yet provide such data. But we can assume that no more than a third, that is, about 15-18 thousands. If we take into account that from these young people we can safely deduct those who cannot serve for health reasons, at least 10-15 percent, and also deduct those who served in the armies of the CSTO member states, then it is far from the most impressive number of potential "recruits". At best, no more than 4-5 thousands. These calculated calculations, of course, do not claim to be the ultimate truth, but the real number of those whom the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation can call into the Russian army, if there is more, is clearly not much.
What happens? And it turns out that the initiative to re-appeal for those who have received a Russian passport, deserves attention, but it will not solve the problems with our time to take root in the shortage of recruits. Is that in some, say, a local version. But with local options is also difficult. After all, today the state deliberately limits the call-up for military service of residents of some North Caucasian republics for a variety of reasons. Does it not turn out that for the “new Russians” it will be necessary to consider something similar at the legislative level.
In general, the initiative with a repeated appeal, with all its external logic, has a lot of pitfalls that the Ministry of Defense should take into account.