In 1998, by Order of the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation No. 100, the "Regulation on the Legal Service"was put into effect. The head of the legal service of the Ural Military District, Colonel of Justice Vladimir Belekhov, tells about the practice of working as legal advisers of the Ural Military District for the social and legal protection of military personnel and their families.

- Readers of our magazine will be interested to know what is the legal service of the district?

- We have 18 full-time positions of legal assistants for regiments, brigades, formations and 10 legal advisers. Unfortunately, 6 out of eighteen are vacant. There are objective and subjective reasons for this.

Objectively, the only military university that supplies us with personnel today, the Military University of the Ministry of Defense, is not able to meet the requirements of the troops for the release of legal assistants. Over the past six years, only three graduates from this educational institution have come to our district. And among them, there is a pronounced tendency to return to Moscow at any cost. There were attempts to launch training courses for such specialists for the territories of Siberia and the Far East on the basis of Yekaterinburg Baku. We tried to create a law school, but this issue has not been resolved yet. Postponed, as they say, in a long box. As for the subjective reasons, there are some of them. And these reasons lie in the fact that the position of a legal assistant is currently unattractive for a graduate of a civil law university. These positions remain in the army structure of officers and are deprived of those monetary allowances that are received, for example, by military lawyers-employees of courts and prosecutor's offices. Our specialists have lower military ranks by regular categories. That is why virtually any graduate who has graduated from a law school with a degree in "military legal work" literally immediately after graduation tries to establish contacts with military courts and prosecutor's offices in order to go to serve in their structure. And our vacancies remain unfilled...

- And yet your service functions and fulfills its tasks...

- of course. And we have a lot of excellent specialists in their field. I can't help but name at least some of them. This is the assistant commander of the unit for legal work, Captain Alexey Morozov , a very competent officer who recently graduated from the Yekaterinburg Law Academy. Assistant to the commander of the motorized rifle regiment for legal work, Captain Valery Belov... But here's the problem: all the assistants in the army are captains. In these military ranks, some have already served two terms. And we can't assign regular titles - our full-time position doesn't allow it.

- How do you assess the work of legal officers in providing emergency legal assistance to officers, warrant officers, soldiers and family members of military personnel directly in the units? Civilians go to the lawyer at their place of residence... And a soldier, knowing that the unit has its own lawyer, will probably go to him first of all...

"Absolutely. Our commander's legal assistants and legal advisers conduct regular receptions for visitors, advise military personnel and their families on the full range of legal issues they are dealing with. I note that there are a lot of such requests.

"Is this practical help?"

- You can't confuse the two concepts. The legal assistant is, let's just say, the commander's right-hand man. Its main functional responsibility is to ensure that the activities of the command fit within the framework of existing legislation. That is, our specialist, if we talk about practical assistance, should first of all provide it to the command... The majority of military personnel who need counseling have the illusion that the consultant should provide assistance until the problem is resolved. This is not our prerogative. We can tell the serviceman where he needs to apply for such practical help, what to do to resolve the conflict situation in which he finds himself, but we are not physically able to represent him in court.

- Legal assistants, figuratively speaking, people of the commander, that is, dependent. Does this not prevent them from performing their functional duties in good faith?

- There were a lot of disputes on this issue at the meetings of military lawyers of various ranks. Do you need independence from the commander-in-chief? I personally believe that the current situation satisfies everyone. In the order of the Minister of Defense, it is determined that we are subordinate to our commanders in our service, and that we are responsible for legal issues

- Department of Defense Affairs. Yes, and as an assistant commander, it can be independent of the commander, if the official name itself contains a pronounced subordination...

- What are the most frequently asked questions of the legal service?

- I can give you an example from the judicial practice of last year. In 1998, with the participation of our service's lawyers, 85 complaints were considered in the courts. In sixty cases, the decision was rendered in favor of the applicant. In nine cases, the applicants were refused, and seventeen complaints are still under consideration. What were the complaints about? 5 - on conscription and military service; 7 - on violation of the established terms of discharge to the reserve; 18-on monetary payments; 10 - on delay in monetary settlements and exclusion from the lists of units; 3 - on restoration to service or work; 1-on housing issues. And the bulk-on the issue of early dismissal under subparagraph " a "of paragraph 3 of Article 51 of the Federal Law"On Military Duty and Military Service". This is a failure to fulfill the terms of the contract on the part of the Ministry of Defense in relation to a serviceman. There were 28 such appeals, and the court ruled in the applicants ' favour on all of them... The situation with funding is such that military personnel have concrete evidence of non-compliance with the terms of the contract in relation to them... If we transfer these court statistics to the real situation of appeals to our specialists for advice and advice, I am sure that the digital indicators will correspond in percentage terms to the range of problems considered in military courts.

- But in the courts, as you said, legal advisers defend the positions of the Ministry of Defense and the command. Is it possible to talk about the social protection of a particular serviceman based on this?

- Of course, in court, the legal assistant, as a rule, acts as an opponent to the applicant, but the departmental approach in no way prevails in our work. If, for example, the commander's order suggests punishing an innocent person, then the legal assistant is just obliged to eliminate this bias so that the person does not suffer. Therefore, if we stand guard over the law, protecting the interests of the Ministry of Defense, then for a law-abiding serviceman this is the same security as for the entire department as a whole.

- How is control over the legality of the orders of the commander-in-chief conducted?

- Legal control of draft orders submitted for signature to the commander is the main task of our specialists. This is not an easy area of our activity. Here's just one example. In 1998, 180 draft orders and directives of the District Commander and Chief of Staff of the UrVO were submitted to the district's legal service for examination. We returned 38 of them for revision. This concerned primarily just social issues: punishment, prosecution. We have corrected these documents and brought them in line with the law.

By the way, the commander of the district troops, Colonel-General Yuri Pavlovich Grekov, will never resolve the controversial issue without legal justification. We and the prosecutor are working closely with him.

- What problems prevent you from working?

"We've already talked about some of them. This is a personnel issue, a status issue. There is another problem - the legal framework. According to the order of the Minister of Defense N 100, commanders of all degrees are required to provide a regulatory framework for their assistants. But financially, when every penny is counted in the army, it is difficult to solve this issue: subscribe to legal literature, purchase computer equipment... So you have to contact, say, the financial and economic department, where the computer data system is regularly updated. We keep in touch with the prosecutor's office and the courts. In a word, the military partnership helps out... We call back and exchange up-to-date information. Although this, of course, is not easy. To keep up with the flow of legal information now, you need to update the computer database on a monthly basis. At the district level, this can still be done, but in the military it is problematic... It seems that issues of material support for legal services should be resolved at the level of the Ministry of Defense, centrally. Set up the case so that the legal assistant has at least the most necessary things: an office, a desk, legal literature, and a computer... It will be easier for a lawyer to work, and as a result, of course, people will benefit - our military personnel, those who turn to a legal adviser for emergency legal assistance.

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