By CNN's Ryan Chilcote

YAROSLAVL, Russia (CNN) -- Russia's military is facing growing dissent among its conscripts who would rather work at home than fight in battles they do not comprehend. Better to do your time in jail, than in the Russian army, they say.

Now Russia is close to passing a law creating an alternative service for Russian men who object to the country's mandatory draft. The bill is currently in the parliament for consideration, but a few regions have gone ahead and started hiring draft-age men for public service.

Would-be conscripts are choosing to sign up as prison guards, instead of serving the mandatory two years in the armed forces.

The draft, the men say, is to be avoided at all costs.

One conscientious objector, called Andrei, said: "People are dying in Chechnya and they don't even know what they're fighting for, or dying for. Here at least you know you're defending the people outside the jail."

Images from that war, and of violence within the army's own ranks, are the main reasons young men do not want to be drafted.

Another Russian trying to avoid serving in the armed forces, called Sergei, said: "The majority of the draftees don't want to serve in the army because of the hazing, the awful attitude towards them... In general, there's chaos in the army, and I don't think you can pick up anything particularly useful there."

Until now the only alternative to the draft was to evade it, something that four out of five young Russian men succeed in doing.

But Andrei and Sergei say the constitution gives them the right to a legal alternative. The military disagrees, and has taken them to court.

The prison job carries little romanticism. The young recruits frisk, search, and watch some of Russia's most hardened criminals. The music is cranked up to full blast to keep the inmates from talking to one another, and the job pays just two dollars a day. The new guards, their supervisor says, are still a little green, but it is good to have fresh blood.

Even as parliament debates changing the conscript law the army is lobbying for tough sentences for draft dodgers. It wants the alternative to military service as unattractive as possible, asking that objectors should face a four-year term -- or twice the length of the draft.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/02/17/russia.military/index.html