The Concept of recruitment formulated by General of the Army Nikolay Pankov at a MOD news briefing as the basis of the Russian Army personnel policy.

1. the Ministry of Defence will sequentially adhere to open and honest attitude to all the hurdles in front of the Armed Forces development.

2. all the steps towards the Armed Forces forthcoming optimization are a part of a delayed plan that's why no changes are to be put into practice before 2008.

3. the newly formulated personnel policy is aimed at promoting the Army service as one of the most prestigeous and noble occupations. It also has the goal of combat readiness maintenance.

Mr. Pankov noted that there are 229 senior divisions of defence education in Russian civil institutes now. They educate more than 170,000 people with 60,000 graduates annualy. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence’s augmentation has hardly ever reached a total of about 6,000 of them through years.

Gen. Pankov pointed out that the quality of this kind of military education is low. That’s why the Ministry of Defence had nothing but to generate new requirements with regard to senior division system and optimize their structures in line with new demands and goals of the Armed Forces. The main piece of the said policy is suggested to be senior division reduction and structural transformation in compliance with the current needs.

In the light of this policy 33 leading institutes of the country are planned to host military training centres. These centres will ensure a high-quality training possibilities to provide officers entering service on a contract basis. The aforementioned institutes educate both technical and haman science expertise.

Students will be accepted for senior divisions on the base of a three-year contract. Those who sign their contract are to be educated at the expense of the state budget. Moreover, the Ministry of Defence plans to pay an additional allowance to those students. Eventually, they are expected to earn 4 to 5 times as much money as their college mates.

Applicants will be selected on the base of a competition with young cadets, distant location residents, children of service member with more than 10 years of active service having preference.

Nikolay Pankov said officers of Reserve will also come from the specified institutes. So, every their student will have possibilities either to become an officer of Reserve, or attend a military training centre for consequent contract service, or choose none of the said.

Moreover, the Ministry of Defence, in conjunction with the Ministry of Education and Science, has determined 35 more institutes with senior divisions, constantly providing high-class education. Their graduates are suggested to avoid conscription.

Gen. Pankov noted that the elite graduates must be employed by their specialty that’s why the Russian Armed Forces will completely reject conscription of officers policy still existing in the Russian Army. He said this policy is the relic of old times.

Speaking on service dererments Mr. Pankov said the system of determents has significantly damaged the Army conscription. Only 9 of 100 eligible young men subject to be conscripted for active service. A prestigeous army is impossible to be created under these conditions.

The leaders of the country decided to reduce the period of active service and alternative unarmed service down to one year beginning from 2008.

Gen. Pankov also noted that the Ministry of Defence is abide by its commitments to keep conscripted solders away from hot spots. The year 2005 evidently demonstrated that the Ministry complied with its obligations as none of conscripts served in the Chechen Republic.

At the time, the Ministry of Defence is formulating a new determent policy which is due to provide for the most essential determents only. Lots of exeisting service delay reasons will be abrogated.