YOUNG RUSSIAN SOLDIERS' LIVES OUT OF DANGER

PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKY. January 17. /RIA Novosti correspondent Oksana Guseva/. The health condition of young soldiers from the Moscow region, who suffered from overcooling on the way to the place of service in Russia's Far East, is improving and no longer cause doctors' apprehensions, Andrei Orlov, chief of the press service of the North-Eastern Border Directorate of the Federal Border Service, told RIA Novosti .

The case of large group of Russian conscripts catching cold as they were airlifted from the center of the country to Magadan, a city at the Sea of Okhotsk (East Siberia), was reported recently by the Russian media. The Russian military prosecutor's office then confirmed that during stopovers the conscripts were kept in the open air for several hours running in severe frost.

According to a spokesman of the North-Eastern Border Directorate, 89 servicemen were taken to Magadan hospitals - 72 of them had acute respiratory disease and 17 got pneumonia. One of the conscripts died. More than half of the rest of them have recovered and 46 recruits still undergo medical treatment, Orlov said.

The military prosecutor's office of the Far Eastern Federal District instituted criminal proceedings on the incident.