Equipment is decrepit, training is inadequate and the conscripts, increasingly, are society's rejects. If military budgets are divided by the number of personnel, Russia ranks at the bottom of major countries, behind even Turkey and India, according to Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the defense committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. A soldier's pay is about a dollar a month. Soldiers are sometimes forced to ask townspeople for toothbrushes and soap, or work in local shops in exchange for supplies. Officers moonlight driving taxis and loading trucks.
Officials acknowledge theft is a problem at all levels of the military.
The military is at only about 80 percent of its authorized strength, according to experts, because most eligible conscripts either bribe their way out of the draft or are exempted. Several thousand soldiers desert every year, and military prosecutors, knowing the conditions, are reluctant to punish them. The suicide rate quoted by Russian military officials is four times higher than in the U.S. armed forces. The Russian army doesn't, in the view of Trenin and others, because of a vestige of Soviet-era military pride. The military campaign in Chechnya shows both the strength of this heritage and the depravity that thrives in a military short on discipline.