Sasha, dressed in a greasy, dirty pair of jeans, a tattered winter coat and torn boots and manifesting visible signs of psoriasis, is a typical representative of a rapidly growing new class of homeless children on Komsomolskaya Ploshchad, one of the most popular hangouts for the army of homeless young Russians aged between five and 16 who eke out a miserable living on the Moscow streets.

Many are often referred to as "social orphans" - as most have either one or both parents living - so as to differentiate them from traditional orphans, who have no living biological parents.

Though the number of these traditional orphans is also on the increase, their fate, in most cases, is somewhat different, as they live under the auspices of various state orphanage homes that offer them help, including provision of primary education, basic professional skills and, on attainment of maturity, apartments.

But worse fates await social orphans, whose exact number remains unknown even to the official agencies charged with fighting against this social phenomenon, as shown by conflicting official data on the issue.

For instance, the federal government put this figure at 1 million and the Procurator´s Office at 2 million, while a figure of 3 million was mentioned at a special hearing at the Federation Council dedicated to the issue in December. Even Goskomstat, the official statistics agency that keeps tabs on all important events and trends in the country, does not have any ready data on the issue, thus demonstrating the low level of importance so far attached to it by these bodies.

Like most of his peers, unable to bear routine abuse from his drinking and jobless parents any longer, Sasha, now 14 with only three years of schooling, ran away from his home in Smolenskaya Oblast in 1999 on a Moscow-bound train.

Now well-versed in the art of street survival, he knows which spots on the Ploshchad are safe enough from the police to solicit money from train commuters or just passers-by, areas in the city convenient and safe for loitering and different quiet spots for quick naps, a prized rarity among the city´s teeming homeless.

He readily listed the police, cold weather and building residents who drive him out of their apartment lobbies among his main threats, but said he feels free in basements and other unhygienic places with his teenage homeless friends.

He would not explain why he came to Moscow, preferring to elaborate more on the difficulties he encounters daily in a completely indifferent city, and flatly refused to entertain any suggestion of returning home to his parents.

"I don´t give a damn if they are worried about me," he added.

What are the causes?

Child homelessness is not totally new in Russia, but current figures are consistent with times of catastrophes caused by such natural events as earthquakes or social upheavals such as wars. Indeed, the last time this phenomenon occurred here was in the early ´20s as a result of the Civil War that followed the October Revolution.

The problem was finally solved when the NKVD under Felix Dherzhinsky started to tackle the problem with the brutal efficiency with which most problems in the Soviet Union were solved.

One reason for the current situation is the socio-political and -economic changes that swept through the country in the ´90s that destroyed previously held societal values without offering any substitutes. Liberalization of the economy, mass unemployment hyperinflation and, later, privatization took their toll on the masses, impoverishing most of them overnight and, consequently, making sustaining families almost an impossible task.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has exacerbated the issue, as a considerable number of these children are Russian neither by nationality nor citizenship. Most of them are purposely dropped by their parents in the hope that they might better survive instead of dying of hunger or becoming burdens in terms of accommodation and employment, as businesses are sometimes reluctant to employ nursing mothers.

Another factor is migration, as young people run away from decaying villages that offer them few or no life prospects to Moscow, where it is easier to earn a living without being noticed, said Yevgeny Balashov, a Moscow City Duma deputy.

These kids, especially young girls, come to big cities driven by a desire to change their fates by hook or by crook. Totally untutored in the hazards of life in big and unfriendly cities, they are easy prey to all sorts of people who exploit their vulnerability and force them into prostitution or other illegal activities against their will.

The federal law "Prophylaxis of Child Negligence and Homelessness," which stripped the police of the right to arrest loitering kids unless they have committed crimes, is another major factor responsible for the escalation, said Yury Lapshin, the City Police Department official in charge of homeless children.

Miserable funding for the orphanage system and its facilities also contributes to an already hopeless situation, as an average salary in the sector for some employees is only about 1,500 rubles a month.

Some of these children, Balashov said, are not even orphans - more than 80 percent of them have parents who encourage them to beg on the assumption that kids soliciting alms for food would arouse more sympathy from passers-by.

How bad is it?

"A more troublesome trend is that some of these kids, especially those with noticeable physical defects, are controlled by organized crime. These kids are specially placed in vantage places to solicit money under the watchful eyes of so-called ´guardians,´ who double as collectors for this revenue for the mob," Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has said on the "Face the City" TV show.

Homeless children have been turned into a multimillion-ruble business under the auspices of the mafia, he added.

This criminal taint has changed people´s general attitude to the fate of these children.

"It´s necessary to make sure that, while helping the needy in the society, we also ensure that this money is not going into the pockets of these criminal elements," Luzhkov added.

Soliciting money for the mob is not the only exploitation faced by these children and is not the only form of criminal activities they are forced into. Late last year, a Moscow Anti-Crime Squad freed two teenage girls from sexual bondage in Khimky. Likewise, a brothel of teen girls was liquidated in the suburbs of St. Petersburg.

Police said such cases of sexual abuse are on the increase as criminals, including local pedophiles, constantly prey on them. Lapshin cited an instance where a university philosophy professor had seriously brutalized a teenage girl after raping her repeatedly for four days. The picture was so ghastly that a female police officer fainted at the crime scene, he added.

Foreigners interested in teen sex have also been incriminated in sexually harassing these homeless kids. A Briton was arrested last year in a Moscow hotel while trying to have sex with a boy he had picked up on the street with the promise of paying 100 rubles.

It is therefore not unusual that sexually transmitted diseases or teenage pregnancies are frequent occurrences. Other frequent medical problems include scabies, lice, fleas and dystrophy of different levels of severity, the experts said.

However, these kids are not only victims of street hooliganism or exploitation by criminals or their own parents - they themselves accounted for more than 9 percent of the 2,968,255 crimes reported in 2001, according to Internal Affairs Ministry data.

The past decade has seen a fantastic rise in the number of crimes committed by then, as an average of 1.2 million minors are arrested every year nationwide for various crimes, including over 1,000 homicide cases. These indices are more than three times the figures recorded in 1990 before the beginning of reforms, said Vladimir Melnikov, a Federation Council Deputy Chairman for security issues.

Andrei Nesterov of the City´s Temporary Detention Center for Minors said about 1,000 teenage lawbreakers such as pickpockets and others charged with minor thefts pass through his facility every month, while Igor Baranchikov, a member of the city´s Teenage Trusteeship Council, cited the example of two teens who butchered their parents under the influence of alcohol and later fed on their remains.

Most of these violent offenders are too young to be indicted for such serious crimes, but those who are 14 or older are deemed legally accountable for their crimes, according to the local legal code.

Alcoholism and drug abuse are rampant, predisposing many to commit more crimes and making them vulnerable to criminals.

Also, many of these children have never seen the walls of an educational facility and are illiterate. In a country with declining demographics, the presence of several million illiterates will not only constitute an extra social load on the welfare system in the future, but is also a potential time bomb with unpredictable consequences, including possibly undermining the labor force and the ability to mobilize forces in times of crisis, according to a Federation Council resolution.

Another issue is that many of these children are completely asocial. Having been left to themselves during their formative years, they exhibit behavior totally inconsistent with their ages or society´s moral and ethical norms, the resolution noted.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel?

With Luzhkov´s blessing, Balashov has proposed a bill that would restrict minors from being on the Moscow streets alone from 11 p.m to 5 a.m. The Police Department´s Lapshin said this period is when most crimes either by or against minors are committed.

The Federation Council, in a special resolution, has asked the federal government, Presidential Administration and all regional administrations to take every measure necessary to control the situation.

However, more concrete aid seems to be on the way, as President Vladimir Putin has raised an alarm on the issue.

"Homelessness is rising among children, and the rate of criminalisation among them has reached such an alarming proportion nationwide that the government needs to take speedy emergency measures to arrest the escalation of these phenomena," Putin noted at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Valentina Matvienko last week.

"The government is aware of this problem and plans to find comprehensive solutions to the issue at a cabinet meeting in February," Matvienko added.

Putin said a decline in family values is largely responsible for kids running away from home. The president has already ordered the government to include plans on strengthening families in the country in a special program being prepared by the government.

Meanwhile Moscow city government has already taken concrete steps by setting up an S.O.S. Program, which operates a shelter where the city´s homeless in general and homeless minors in particular can go for aid at any time, said Lyudmila Shetsova, a deputy premier in charge of social affairs at the City Hall.

The problem is that these people are not going there for help, preferring to loiter in the streets instead, she said.

At times, social workers pick up these children and send them to the city´s special social-orphanage centers, where they are washed-up, fed and given medical attention, if necessary. Later, efforts are made to find their parents or get them papers necessary for legal adoption, said Yelena Borisova, a social worker at the Maryino Teenage Center.

Adoption of these children by foster parents, which might seem a logical solution to this problem, is not applicable in most of cases.

"Being social orphans, these kids are not legally eligible for adoption because they have living parents who still retain parental rights over them. A long and tedious bureaucratic procedure is required to deprive them of these rights before the child can become eligible for adoption," she added.