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| Dec 2005 / Jan 2006 Issue | |||||||||||||||||
| In late October 2005, Russian Internal Troop Unit No. 3377, which guards the Mining and Chemical Combine in the Russian “closed nuclear city” of Zheleznogorsk, suffered its third hazing-related death in ten months, a situation characterized in the Russian press as “unhealthy” and “dangerous.” Zheleznogorsk is a part of the Russian nuclear weapons complex and houses a large-scale, plutonium-producing reactor, as well as several tons of plutonium directly usable for nuclear weapons. Internal Troops are under the control of the Russian Ministry of the Interior. Internal Troops are a critical element of the security arrangements for protecting Russia’s sensitive nuclear facilities and its 600 tons of weapons-usable nuclear materials (plutonium and highly enriched uranium). The troops are normally responsible for guarding the perimeter of Russia’s closed nuclear cities and other sensitive sites, where these stocks are located, and they would play a crucial role in responding to an armed attack on a weapon-material storage facility. The repeated episodes of violence within the Zheleznogorsk Internal Troop unit indicate it suffers from poor morale and a lack of discipline that could erode its ability to perform these duties, increasing the vulnerability of sensitive facilities and materials in Zheleznogorsk to sabotage and theft. According to newspaper reports, a group of Dagestani soldiers in their second year of service systematically hazed first-year soldiers, leading one of the latter to take his life. The commander of the unit, the reports state, then tried to conceal the case by claiming that the suicide was caused by a letter  from the soldier’s girlfriend. The matter, however, attracted the close attention of military investigators, as well as that of the commander of the Siberian Military District, and the attempted cover-up failed. The unit is reported to have one of the highest rates of suicides, use of arms against fellow soldiers, accidental fatalities, and attempted desertions in Russia, with a total of four such cases in 2005 and four in 2004. The chief reason behind these incidents is reported to be hazing (“dedovshchina,” in Russian), which is widespread in Russian armed forces, but in Zheleznogorsk is further aggravated by conflicts between soldiers of different ethnic backgrounds. A member of the regional legislature has demanded that the commander of Unit 3377 be replaced, in the view of the dismal record of suicides, shootings, and fatal or near-fatal accidents the unit has experienced.
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