MOSCOW, February 25 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian military conscript who was severely beaten by a fellow soldier in an apparent hazing incident has been awarded 750,000 rubles ($20,000) by a court in the Urals region of Chelyabinsk.
The court said in a statement Tuesday that the recruit, Yevgeny Mikhailov, suffered an “open craniocerebral injury” in the beating, which occurred at barracks in the Ural Mountain town of Chebarkul in summer 2011.
Following the incident, Mikhailov was deemed unfit for service and discharged from the military. He has since been declared disabled.
The Russian military has long been plagued by systematic hazing, particularly of freshly inducted draftees, which is a tradition that dates back to the Soviet era.
The Union of the Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia says it receives hundreds of reports of hazing annually, although military officials say the phenomenon has become significantly less pronounced in recent years.
