"The President of the country supported our initiative to develop a network of centers for military-patriotic education of young people "Avangard". It is planned to create them not only at the regional level, but also in cities with a population of more than one hundred thousand people, " Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Friday at a conference call with representatives of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.
According to him, the activity of such centers is one of the key criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the region's work on preparing citizens for military service." Shoigu recalled that among the first "Avangrad" created and now show high results in the Nizhny Novgorod and Tula regions, the Republic of Mari El and Dagestan, as well as in the Stavropol Territory. "Unfortunately, there are still no such educational platforms in the Vladimir, Ivanovo, Yaroslavl Regions and the Jewish Autonomous Region. It is necessary to speed up the resolution of this issue, " the Defense Minister said.
He is sure that in Russia there is an exorbitant demand in the centers of military-patriotic education of young people. And the very first "Vanguard" was created by the authorities of Moscow and the Moscow region. Its capacity allows it to train 36 thousand people annually. "There is already the first experience. The pandemic has somewhat prevented us from doing this work more actively. But the first sets that passed through the center - and there were 600 people-showed that there is an extremely high demand in such centers, " Shoigu said.
He noted that as soon as the Avangard centers began to appear in the country, there was immediately a demand from girls - why do only boys study there? "Only on the website of the Avangard center of the Moscow region there are more than ten thousand applications from girls," the minister said. "And I think we're finishing our first girls' shift this week." The same thing is happening all over the country. Once again I can say: this direction in the preparation of the children turned out to be extremely popular. We have students and schools go to different tricks to get another shift, then another one."
Shoigu recalled that the work on the implementation of the instructions of the President of Russia began last year And began, according to the minister, "not just like that, but on a topic that has long been discussed and discussed in various areas - whether primary military training is needed in schools or not." For two decades, there have been discussions about the need to introduce NVP as a mandatory subject in pre-university educational institutions.
"We have moved away from these conversations and disputes, and proposed, in our opinion, a completely justified option, when centers for military, military-patriotic training are created. Centers where, on an absolutely voluntary basis, or to be more precise, at their own request, children can undergo a cycle of military training within a few days. By law, this can be within one week. Actually, that is what is happening today, " Shoigu said.
Yuri Gavrilov
