Soldier posted to Siberia for online whinge .video"When we're off to old siberia to si.beer..eereri...ia"
Moscow - If Russian soldiers have anything to sing about they usually do it in foot-stomping Cossack choirs belting out the words to Kalinka. Lieutenant Vitaly Efremov decided to take a more modern approach: he made a rap video, released online, complaining about the rotten state of his barracks. The clip hit a nerve with the top brass, which decided to post him to Siberia,
Lieutenant Vitaly Efremov decided to take a more modern approach: he made a rap video, released online, complaining about the rotten state of his barracks.
The clip hit a nerve with the top brass, which decided to post him to Siberia, where he can exercise his musical talents in the windswept tundra. He can probably consider himself lucky that he did not sing Elvis Presley’s Jail House Rock or the Pretenders’ Back on the Chain Gang.
The lieutenant modelled his video on Stan by Eminem, in which the rapper sends a letter to a frustrated fan. The Russian letter is to Anatoly Serdyakov, the Defence Minister, and is set against a backdrop of military decay: a crowded barrack room with peeling wallpaper, a scabrous bathroom, erratic shower water and broken equipment.
Just as Stan complains that Eminem does not reply to his post, so the lieutenant’s e-mail moans about a lack of response from the Minister. The video said that no progress had been made on granting cheap credits to professional soldiers, such as Lieutenant Efremov, who want to buy their own home. The Russian Army has shrunk from a Soviet-era level of 4 million to 1.2 million, with conscript service cut from 18 months to a year. It is increasingly dependent on professionals who sign up for fixed-term contracts, but they are more demanding, insisting on better conditions, wages and pensions.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article4860595.ece