MOSCOW. April 25 (Interfax-AVN) - Reduction of funds allocated for the transition to professional service with the Russian Armed Forces will drag the process on for many years, Lieutenant General Valery Astanin, head of the manning department in the General Staff mobilization directorate, said on Friday.
"It has been proposed to amend the Defense Ministry's project of transition to professional service. The project covers a period of four years, provides for switching over 195 units to professional service and requires RUB138bn (USD4.44bn). We have alternative variants requiring RUB55bn (USD1.77bn) to RUB95bn (USD3.05bn). But we will only be able to switch over to professional service a couple of dozens of military units over this period," Astanin told Ekho Moskvy radio.
According to him, the experiment on manning the 76th airborne division with professionals encounters a lot of problems. "Many professional servicemen retire after a week or two in service," Astanin said. Results of the experiment have been taken into account by drafters of the program of the transition to professional service.
"Under the draft program, about 176,500 professional privates and sergeants are to have been recruited by 2008," Astanin said.
The Armed Forces already have about 130,000 professional privates and sergeants, he went on. 58,000 of them are women.
Meanwhile, the draft for active-duty service is progressing as planned, Astanin said. "Forty-three percent of the targeted number of citizens have already been drafted," he said. The targeted number is 175,000 people.
As many as 4,700 people will be recruited from Moscow.
The declining number of eligible persons makes it necessary to abolish some draft deferments, including those related to studies in higher military educational establishments, Astanin said. The number of such establishments has increased unjustifiably all over Russia, he claimed. "There were 535 higher educational establishments in the USSR in the early 1990s, but Russia now has over 1,000 of them. At the same time, many academy graduates are working at marketplaces," Astanin noted.