theme 01/19/1993 (1993)

Start the program.

The theme of the release is mercenaries.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the armies of the former Soviet republics, a certain percentage of soldiers of various types of troops remains to serve.

Another number of soldiers moved into the category of mercenaries.

Their exact number, as a rule, is unknown, the ministries of defense of the current independent states are extremely reluctant to share this kind of information and often deny the very fact of using mercenaries in the current service and in combat operations.

In the event of hostilities, it is almost impossible for relatives and officers in Russia to obtain information about the fate of their husbands and fathers.

Who should be responsible for the soldiers and their families?

What makes the Russian military remain in the armies of conflicting states?

How to behave in the event of a full-scale war in order to comply with national and military laws?

And are there fundamental differences in such definitions as “mercenary”, “volunteer” and “professional”?

In the studio, Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Defense Forces of the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan Yuri Nikolaevich Novichenko and Alahverdy Navruzovich Nuriev, the manager of the affairs of the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan; Vladimir Mikhailovich Gavrilenko, a correspondent of the newspaper “Krasnaya Zvezda”, and active military personnel also take part in the conversation.

The program shows stories about the independence of Azerbaijan, the use of mercenaries in the Azerbaijani army, the pilot shot down over Stepanakert (at the time of the release of the program he was sentenced to death, later pardoned), based on the materials of ITA and Armenian television.

Comments to the stories - Andrei Soroko, a political analyst at the Institute of World Economy, International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences.