NIZHNY NOVGOROD. April 17 (Interfax-AVN)- Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov believes that the length for alternative civil service should be set at four years.
"I support the government's bill on alternative civil service," the defense minister told journalists after his visit to a motorized rifle division in Mulino in the Nizhny Novgorod region.
"There are many questions as far as the term of alternative service is concerned. When we calculated how much time and active duty serviceman spends in service, which is all his time except hours of sleep, it turned out that alternative civil service must last for six years," Ivanov said.
The minister admitted that such term would be "too long" and said that "at the current stage we believe that the length for alternative civil service should be set at four years."
Ivanov lashed out at the experiment held in Nizhny Novgorod in autumn 2001 when 21 men were recruited for alternative civil service. "The experiment resulted in an obvious and predictable dead end. I have no pity for the politicians who launched it, I pity those who fell for the trick and signed a labor agreement with the administration of hospitals," he said.