ST.PETERSBURG. Nov 6 (Interfax-AVN) - A large number of young residents of St. Petersburg dodging the draft have legal rights to draft deferment or exemption from military service, the city's military commissioner Major General Sergei Veryovkin said on Wednesday.
"The number of draft dodgers amounted to about 1,000 during the spring 2002 draft. Nearly all of them were found and brought to draft boards. And then it turned out that a considerable number of them were causing unneeded troubles to both themselves and workers of military commissioner's offices, because 70 percent had legal rights to deferment and even exemption. They should have only showed up at the military commissioner's office and cleared out the matter," Veryovkin told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The situation is the same during the autumn draft, he said.
Unfortunately, many potential draftees and their parents prefer paying various commercial companies for consultations on draft to getting free information from the military commissioner's office, the general noted.
Advertisements of various limited liability companies and JSCs offering "guaranteed deferment" can be found in the St. Petersburg underground and local newspapers. As a result, citizens pay RUB200-250 (USD6.3-7.9) per consultation or even much more without any guarantees.
"Moreover, documents issued by such companies are an additional reason to question the diagnosis and send the potential draftee for an additional medical examination," deputy military commandant of the city's Central district Lieutenant Colonel Igor Gavrilovets told Interfax-AVN.
Deputy Military Commissioner of St. Petersburg Colonel Guram Dikhamindzhiya earlier told Interfax-AVN that St. Petersburg shows the highest draft dodging levels in all Russia.
"We face a real challenge - St. Petersburg has the highest dodging level as compared with other regions of Russia. From 100 potential recruits over 90 are on deferment, mainly on education grounds. All in all, from 100 people only some 10 men can be recruited in northwestern European Russia," the colonel said.
The military commissioner's office is concerned with poor knowledge and legal illiteracy among the youth. Many deferrable people do not show up at a military commissioner's office to receive an official deferment. Probably, they are afraid they might be recruited, Dikhamindzhiya said.