VIDNOYE, Moscow Region. Nov 16 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said that as soon as the military detention practice is resumed, commanding officers will have another powerful means of punishment of non-diligent soldiers.
"With the normal, civilized system of administrative detention introduced, military commanders will finally get a right to arrest soldiers for disciplinary offences without any ruling of a court of law," Ivanov told a Wednesday news conference in the Moscow region commenting on the State Duma's resolution to approve the amendments to the legislation that regulates military detention in the Russian Armed Forces.
"Please try to understand that if a soldier is drunk, or misbehaves in the barracks or otherwise offends the military regulations and manuals, he ought to be punished, and the commander should have the right to punish him," he said.
"It is obvious that commanding officers are the ones responsible, but they should also have some rights to enhance military discipline. Therefore, as a Defense Minister, I am all for the law adopted by the Duma," he said.
Ivanov expressed hope that the Federation Council will also approve of the amendments to the law that will allow reinstating military detention practice in the Russian Armed Forces in 2007.
According to him, the Defense Ministry has long been waiting for the bill to pass. "I think that it took a little too long, because during four years officers could only punish non-diligent misbehaving soldiers by punitive reprimands, extra duty and deprivation of right for official leave," he said.
He added that commanding officers had no rights whatsoever to ensure that military discipline, law and order are observed in units.
Retired General Boris Gromov, the governor of the Moscow region, who was present at the news conference, said in reply to the question whether he had ever been kept at a military detention facility: "Sure thing! An officer is not such, if he hadn't been detained. I was kept on detention for five days in St. Petersburg, exactly in the cell where Mikhail Lermontov (a famous Russian poet - Interfax-AVN) used to be kept, and was very proud of that."
"You see, generals know the geography of military detention facilities quite well," Ivanov concluded jokingly.