The government should develop a mechanism for compensating servicemen.
The St Petersburg Garrison Military Court has delivered a special ruling addressed directly to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Defense Ministry on the violation of servicemen's rights. It all started when Vladislav Baleyevsky, a member of the Leningrad Military District's Military Prosecutor's Office, filed a lawsuit challenging the military agency's refusal to pay him cash in compensation for the 411 days of statutory leave that he had not used. Interestingly enough, the refusal stems from the absence of a procedure that would allow for such a payment of compensation, a procedure which was supposed to have been developed by the Russian Defense Ministry.
In October of this year, the St Petersburg Garrison Military Court received a claim from a member of the Military Prosecutor's Office of the Leningrad Military District, Vladislav Baleyevsky, who challenged as illegal the actions of the chief financial officer of the Leningrad Military District Headquarters. Apparently, military financiers refused to compensate the military prosecutor for the 411 days of holidays he'd accumulated over several years of service with the joint army group in the North Caucasus. Baleyevsky's claim to the Leningrad Military District was for over 1 million roubles.
Under the federal law on the status of serviceman, servicemen taking part in military activities which impose no limits on the weekly hours of service - those on guard duty, for instance - are entitled to additional time for rest. Servicemen may surrender extra days of rest in exchange for cash compensation. Vladislav Baleyevsky availed himself of this provision after being transferred from the North Caucasus to Petersburg this year, and he asked for compensation.
Although, in principle, the law clearly allows the replacement of days of rest with cash, the court ordered the heads of relevant executive bodies to develop the procedure and the terms of such payments. It became clear during the hearings into Baleyevsky's complaint, however, that the Defense Ministry had not yet developed a mechanism for paying cash compensations.
As a result, the Petersburg Garrison Military Court upheld part of Vladislav Baleyevsky's claim and ordered the financial department of the Leningrad Military District's Headquarters to pay the officer about 240,000 roubles. The military court also delivered a dictum addressed to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the Defense Ministry, drawing their attention to the violation of the serviceman's rights. As such, the federal authorities have one month to notify the military court of the measures they've taken to remedy the situation.
Earlier, the St Petersburg Garrison Court handed down a similar ruling on a case involving officers' traveling expenses. At that time, the military court directed the attention of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to the fact that small traveling allowances - which have not been adjusted for inflation since 2002 - were creating "conditions for servicemen to commit crimes". "Vladislav Baleyevsky's lawsuit occurred because somebody at the Defense Ministry has failed to develop a mechanism for paying compensations. This shortcoming must be eliminated. By doing so, we will prevent similar appeals from being filed with military courts," the chairman of the St Petersburg Garrison Military Court, Yuri Kozlov, told Kommersant. The Defense Ministry's press secretary, Alexei Kuznetsov, told Kommersant that he could not comment on the situation until the court's decision was delivered to the Defense Ministry.
Yunna Kotsar; Dmitry Marakulin