MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Dmitry...
example, in the mixed conscription units."Military justice officials insist that they have learned from their past mistakes, and that the rights of servicemen are protected. In response to my question at a press-conference in Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alexander Nikitin, a department head at the Main Military Prosecutor"s Office, overseeing law enforcement in military units, said that conscripts would be given special memos listing their rights as well as telephone numbers of the closest military prosecutor"s offices.
According to Nikitin, last year hundreds of criminal cases were opened for the violations of servicemen"s rights. There have been cases when military prosecutors literally rescued desperate soldiers, and such cases have become more frequent recently.
Still, the main safeguard against violence is not the military prosecutors but civil monitoring of compliance with the law and the presence of people who are not indifferent to the problems of conscripts.