General Yury Baluyevsky said under a four-year reform plan costing 2.8 billion dollars (2.4 billion euros) due to start in 2004, Russia will gradually make the transition from a largely conscript army.

Already today in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, where some 80,000 troops are fighting separatist rebels, around half of these soldiers are volunteers, he told a group of foreign journalists.

This was in line with President Vladimir Putin's policy of making sure that only properly-trained soldiers were sent to "hot spots," the general said.

Until now it has been assumed that a reform plan proposed by Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov -- under which a professional rapid reaction force of some 166,000 soldiers is to be set up by 2007 -- would leave the conscript system almost intact.

Russia has been trying to reform its chronically underfunded and violence-ridden armed services since the mid-1990s, but reforms aiming to scale back the 1.1 million-strong military have faced a series of setbacks.

There is stiff resistance from hawkish army generals trained in the Soviet era who fear the military will collapse without conscription, knowing that few would probably choose to serve in an armed forces where bullying is rampant and service in hotspots like Chechnya is on the cards.

Baluyevsky himself last month said that Russia would cut its armed forces by just 100,000 men -- to a million -- which would make it hugely expensive to maintain a large professional force if the draft is cut drastically.

General Viktor Storonin, head of the military's economic research department, confirmed to journalists that the draft -- a process notorious for rampant hazing and ill treatment of new conscripts -- would be reduced from two years to one beginning in 2008.

Putin announced the measure in his state-of-the-nation address in May.

The conscripts will spend the first six months in a training centre, and the next six months in an ordinary unit -- which means they will not be sent on active combat duty in rapid reaction forces.

This should ensure an end to bullying in the ranks as "there won't be any contact anymore between soldiers of different levels," said general Storonin.

WAR.WIRE