RZHEVKA (Leningrad Region), July 31 (RIA Novosti) – Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Wednesday that all Russian military units should begin their mornings by singing the national anthem.
Currently, some Russian military units sing the anthem during evening roll call. But doing so is not mandatory and is carried out upon orders from the commander.
"I instruct Russian military units to begin every morning by singing the anthem, no matter with what the servicemen are busy with," Shoigu said at a meeting of senior ministry officials.
Shoigu also said that a unified course of the history of the Russian military should be developed and introduced into all educational programs for Russian servicemen. The announcement comes about a month after Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai Pankov voiced plans to create a special military unit to work with archives and monitor the "falsification of history."
Russia’s armed forces are in the midst of a major program of reform, including a gradual transition to an all-volunteer makeup, organizational changes and re-equipment with advanced weapons, in a bid to create a military more suitable for future challenges and less like the legacy left over from the Soviet era.
In line with the reform, the Defense Ministry is looking for numerous computer programmers to develop new software for the forces. The ministry also plans to create other units to work in fields such as sociology and psychology.
Although Russian soldiers’ daily schedules vary by region and military branch, their regimes are now being revised to give conscripts more time to rest and recover after intense training and studies, according to a website offering useful information for military officers. In recent years, Russian ground force units have started introducing naptime.
