As many as 30,000 children and teenagers go missing in Russia every year, head of the Children Future of Russia public watchdog Leonid Chekalin told reporters on Wednesday. He put the number of homeless children at nearly 2.5 million and said that 2,000 children commit suicide every year.

Over the past five years law enforcers launched 190 probes into child trafficking. Other official statistics are not in the least encouraging, either, Chekalin said. According to Interior Ministry reports, 500,000 to 2.5 million Russian children are homeless. At least 2,000 commit suicide every year and 2 million are illiterate.

Two years ago 41,000 child and teenage criminal gangs were active in Russia, which was double the number of scout organizations registered in the country, Chekalin said.

Sergei Komkov, president of the Russian Education Fund, told the news conference that in 2005 the government plans to slash aid to homeless children by 1.7 million rubles, which, adjusted for inflation, may amount to 15 to 20 per cent. “The police are not interested in bringing down the number of homeless children, as plenty of unsolved crimes are attributed to them,” Komkov said.

Meanwhile, if the problem is not solved within 2 or 3 years it may bring about irreversible consequences, Komkov said. “An enormous, uncontrollable, declassed and fully criminalized mass of people is able to write off any state order,” he said.