ST.PETERSBURG. Feb 9 (Interfax-AVN) - About 70 percent of young men aged 17 to 27 residing in northwestern European Russia were considered fit for active-duty service during the 2003 fall draft, the headquarters of the Leningrad military district said on Monday.
"Seventy-two and a half percent of young men summoned to draft boards turned out fit for military service. The number of draftees who have training in their military professions has increased among those who were sent to troops. The number of draftees with higher and secondary professional education has grown as well as compared to the fall of 2002," a spokesman for the headquarters told Interfax-Military News Agency.
"The number of young men who were brought up without parents, were registered with the police or had criminal record did not decline" during the fall draft, the spokesman said.
The number of people who did not show up at military commissioner's offices of the district amounted to one percent of the number of summoned men, which much lower than results of the 2003 spring draft and three times lower than results of the 2002 fall draft.
Chief of the district's press service and aide to the district commander for public relations Colonel Yuri Klenov told Interfax-AVN that the district headquarters held an instruction and methodological exercise for officials of administrations and municipal bodies and military commissioners of the districts constituting the Leningrad region on Monday. The exercise took place at facilities of the 56th training center near St. Petersburg.
"Participants in the exercise discussed implementation of the federal purpose oriented program of transition to professional service with several units. The Leningrad district has five such units. Participants in the exercise analyzed the Leningrad region's compliance with laws on liability to bear arms and military service, mobilization readiness and mobilization in the Russian Federation, and on alternative civil service," Klenov said.
Practice in arrangement of combat training took place at the training ground, he went on. Participants in the exercise also got a chance to study the equipment in the inventory of motorized rifle companies and practice in firing of various types of small arms.