Quote Originally Posted by Eric C. View Post
It might sound nice until they come up with something like a law prescribing to throw every 10th 18-year old male off a roof at a height of 30 metres, for instance. Anyway, forcing anyone to do something against their will is illegal, and this is what is a real crime. A law legalizing such kind of things is just a wrong law.
You must be American since you know what's a "real crime" in countries other than your own, and what isn't...! It's their problem either way. FYI: This system is in use in some countries that are much more democratic than both the US and Russia, and voters (including the men affected) see no big problem with it.

I am no big fan of the Russian army (or conscription) but I no difficulty understanding why 1) Russians feel they have to have an army and 2) they have had to use conscription to get the amount of soldiers they need to do the job properly. Anyone who ever looked in a history book would know that.

Plus, as people mentioned here, in Russia it's clearly quite simple to get out of it anyway so it's a theoretical problem only. In smaller countries that option doesn't exist, since every person counts.

Incidentally, without the Russian conscription based army WW2 Germany would probably have won in WW2.

But it seems Russia ought to improve the conditions for the soldiers a bit.