Also, there is a russian forum about French Foreign Legion – people discuss getting all the way to France without legally crossing a single border, and there are even actual success stories. Google “иностранный легион форум”, it’s the first link.

You think? Conscription is not about training real soldiers – they have the professional army for that – it is about free workforce. Instead of giving the guy real training, real equipment and a real mission they make him broom the baseyard for years in the name of “serving your country”. Since people usually have better things to do with their lives, most of them pay a doctor to declare them disabled in some way. This highly reduces the reserves in manpower so the draftboard ends up drafting whoever they can, including the not-so-young and fit. I “served” together with a guy with hartproblems, with another who was screaming in his sleap and with several with criminal records and I wouldn’t trust them with a letter opener, not to mention live ammunition. This was the situation in Hungary before they stoped the draft for obvious reasons, it would surprise me if it was different at any other ex-Warsaw Pact army.

p.s.: When I ask any American ex-soldier howmany shots he fired in basic training they all say they don’t know. I know howmany I (and everyone else) fired: 9 (3 in single fireing mode and 6 in lmao “burst”).