MOSCOW – Amid reports that dozens of Russian soldiers are dying and hundreds committing suicide every year because of brutal hazing, officials are cracking down on soldiers’ rights groups.

In a report released this week, New York-based Human Rights Watch urged President Putin to take action against the systematic abuse of conscripts, including harassment, humiliation, beatings, and sexual assaults.

“The Russian army is in crisis and what’s amazing is that a president who is so preoccupied with national security is not dealing with an issue that so clearly undermines military capabilities,” said the author of the report, Diederik Lohman.

At the same time, officials are pursuing a campaign against soldiers fighting to defend conscripts’ rights. Deputies in the lower house of Parliament, the State Duma, announced this week that they are planning to launch an investigation into the financing of one of Russia’s best-known rights organizations, the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers. Last month, the police also arrested a woman for helping a conscript get decommissioned from the army.

Russia’s nearly 800,000 conscripts make up the backbone of its 1 million strong military, which has suffered from collapsing morale and massive funding cuts since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Human Rights Watch report, based on three years of research and more than 100 interviews, said that in their first year, new recruits live with constant demands from senior soldiers to carry out arbitrary tasks, from polishing boots to procuring money, alcohol, or food. Failure to comply results in severe beatings, some of which have resulted in death. Having endured this in their first year of service, second-year conscripts avenge themselves by doing the same to new recruits, leading to an endless cycle of violence.

The report said the army’s demoralized and underpaid officers either ignore the abuses or encourage them as a way to maintain discipline in the ranks. Top brass, meanwhile, appear unwilling to address the problem, and government officials have ignored the issue in numerous speeches about military reform.

“They don’t deny that this problem exists, but they don’t seem to have the political will to really take it on,” Mr. Lohman said.

According to military statistics, 25 soldiers died as a result of hazing and 12 others died from excessive force used by their officers in the first half of this year. During the same period, 109 committed suicide. Critics say the military is intentionally understating the figures and that the actual number of deaths is significantly higher.

Russia’s main military prosecutor’s office yesterday accused Human Rights Watch of bias and dismissed its report as inaccurate.

In a statement, the prosecutor’s office said that interviews with 100 conscripts from 50 units “could hardly reflect an objective picture.” It said that no hazing crimes had been registered in 80% of units.

“The representatives of Human Rights Watch cannot not know that neither the command nor prosecutors have ever tried to avoid solving this problem. Just the opposite: Over recent years we have undertaken massive work with this phenomenon in the army,” the statement read.

It noted that hotlines, regular checks of military units, and constant cooperation with civic groups had been established. Still, critics said government efforts have been largely ineffective.

“The hazing is getting worse; I wouldn’t even call it hazing now, I’d call it torture,” said the head of the Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers’ branch in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, Natalia Zhukovna.

As well as raising awareness of hazing, the union’s committees instruct families on how their sons can avoid compulsory military service, monitor deaths in the military, and help deserters.

After more than 10 years of tackling the issue, the group has made many enemies in the military and government. While announcing the launch of an investigation into their financing, Duma deputies this week accused the group of being funded by organizations seeking to undermine the Russian army.

A deputy from the nationalist Motherland party, Viktor Alksnis, alleged in an interview with Moscow Echo radio that the group gets $15 million a year from international sources seeking to weaken Russia’s defense capabilities.

“Whoever pays for a girl’s dinner gets to dance with her,” he said.

Mrs. Zhukovna laughed at the claims.

“The funding we receive is miserly, crumbs, and we receive it from foundations legally registered to work in Russia,” she said. “We were not founded by big business or some power, our organization’s only motivation is life, the life of the Russian people.”

The investigation follows the arrest of Lyudmila Yarilina, the chairwoman of a Soldiers’ Mothers Committee in the city of Vladimir near Moscow. Her group is not affiliated with the other committees. Prosecutors accused her of convincing doctors to simulate or artificially inflict illnesses on two conscripts to help them get out of the army. She has also been accused of accepting bribes in exchange for helping conscripts avoid service. She faces up to seven years in jail if convicted.

The Union of Committees of Soldiers’ Mothers has further rankled its critics by beginning to weigh in on political issues. It is in the process of forming a political party and recently announced it would be holding talks with Chechen rebel leaders. The Kremlin has refused to hold peace talks with rebels from the breakaway region of Chechnya, where hundreds of Russian soldiers die every year from guerrilla attacks. The group this month invited the Chechen rebel leader, Aslan Maskhadov, to meet with its representatives to discuss a ceasefire. A spokesman for Mr. Maskhadov said he had agreed and that a meeting will take place in Western Europe some time next month.