#14
The Russia Journal
April 26-May 2, 2002
General Staff critical of paratroops
By ALEXANDER GOLTS

There’s no need to prove that the Russian Army, which can’t get reform underway, is in the process of disintegration. But what’s especially amazing is that the top military brass is now finding ways to make things worse even in the few areas where it still has a semblance of order.

The General Staff has just completed a full-scale inspection of the paratroops. General Staff officials, who only recently were obsessed with preventing the slightest leak of information about the state of the Armed Forces, now happily tell journalists about the problems they’ve unearthed.

Paratroops officers, it turns out, don’t know how to organize combat training for their troops. In any case, the paratroops’ training grounds are in no fit state for holding exercises. Finally, the paratroops commanders don’t know how to plan combat-training exercises jointly with other branches of the Armed Forces. Clearly influenced by this report, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov had somewhat vague but definitely disapproving words for the paratroops: "The paratroops have turned into something resembling a primitive folk image – they carried out peacekeeping functions, including in the Balkans, and at the same time busied themselves breaking bricks with their heads."

All these shortcomings un-doubtedly exist. But the inspectors neglected to add that no Russian officer – not just the paratroops – knows how to organize combat training. During Ivanov’s recent visit to the Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya divisions, officers told him how they were obliged to learn from their sergeants.

Strapped for cash and short of arms, the Russian Army hasn’t been able to carry out training over the last decade. Even now, commanders have the resources for just one battalion-level training exercise in each military district. Most likely, even the officers who inspected the paratroops have never organized such maneuvers themselves. Certainly, it looks absurd to single out the paratroops command in this respect.

True, the paratroops level of combat-readiness is far from ideal. And their discipline could be better. But even the obviously biased inspection commission rated their combat-readiness as satisfactory. The 32,000 paratroopers are almost constantly in the middle of military operations, after all. Over the two years of war in Chechnya, four regimental tactical groups have taken turns being stationed there, and, until recently, the paratroops were responsible for peacekeeping operations in both the Balkans and Abkhazia.

These tasks were given to the paratroops, however, because only they could quickly put together relatively combat-ready units. It’s also significant that the 76th paratroops division was selected for the Armed Forces’ experiment on setting up a division manned solely by professional soldiers.

But if the paratroops are in a better state than the rest of the Armed Forces (the Defense Ministry knows this and uses the paratroops to patch up holes elsewhere), then why carry out an inspection and make paratroops officers nervous with talk of merging the paratroops with ground forces?

There’s no rational explanation. The only answer is that head of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin, who hopes to become defense minister sooner or later, is busy trying to get all possible rivals out of the way. Kvashnin’s most obvious rivals in this respect are the most talented and respected generals.

Everyone still remembers how Kvashnin berated the Strategic Missile Forces only because he considered their commander his rival. Kvashnin managed to convince President Vladimir Putin that the only permanently combat-ready branch of the Armed Forces should be scaled back even faster than the rate at which Russia’s missiles are coming to the end of their service lives. Kvashnin proposes that, of 19 divisions, only two will remain. This would deprive Russia of its nuclear parity with the United States and its main bargaining chip in negotiations with Washington.

Now, paratroops commander Georgy Shpak is in Kvashnin’s firing line. Everything is heading towards the paratroops losing their independence. Meanwhile, it’s clear that the foundation of future armed forces won’t be the "heavy" mechanized divisions the General Staff persists in calling the "divisions of the 21st century," but mobile paratroops and light-infantry units.

When Sergei Ivanov became defense minister a year ago after public disputes between Kvashnin and former Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev, many thought the quarrels in the Defense Ministry were over. Instead, however, Ivanov has found himself dragged into disputes between the generals. The main problem is that, with no clear reform program for the Armed Forces, officers, including top-level commanders, have no clear prospects for the future and give themselves over to fighting for their own personal ambitions instead. The generals are ready to sacrifice even the country’s last combat-ready units for the sake of these ambitions.

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