#9
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
March 6, 2002
TWO CENTERS OF POWER IN THE MILITARY
Army generals attempting to adjust the Kremlin's foreign policy
Author: Igor Korotchenko
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

VLADIMIR PUTIN RESEMBLES NIKITA KHRUSCHEV IN HIS CAUTIOUS TREATMENT OF THE TOP BRASS. TO ALL APPEARANCES, THE TOP RUSSIAN GENERALS ARE IRRITATED BY PRESIDENT PUTIN'S COURSE TOWARD A WARMING IN THE RELATIONS WITH THE WEST AND ESTABLISHING PARTNERSHIP WITH THE US AND NATO.

While Defense Minister Igor Ivanov spoke against dramatizing the fact that NATO is carrying out the Strong Resolve 2002 strategic exercise near Russia's northwest borders, General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of the General Staff, made unprecedented harsh statements when on business trip to troops of the Moscow Military District. According to him, the aforementioned NATO exercise prove the steadiness of the Alliance's Cold War-era views as to its probable adversary (Russia and Belarus). General Kvashnin called the Fundamental Russian-NATO Act an "information screen" and called upon the Russian Armed Forces to be prepared to repel an external military aggression.

General Kvashnin's statement quoted by the Interfax-MNA agency contradicts the official position of the Russian Defense Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, and the Kremlin. At the same time, the theses voiced by the chief of the General Staff are to a large extent consonant with the current moods of Russian officers and are certain to be supported in troops. Army garrisons, exhausted by poverty, constant humiliation, state authorities' total indifference to their problems, and the government's inability to defend the national interests in the international arena, are gradually developing anti-president spirits. According to certain estimates, no more than one-third of career army officers support President Putin's foreign policy. Some believe 2002 may become a turning-point year in the relationships between the army and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

This is not the first time General Kvashnin dares oppose statements of his immediate superior Sergei Ivanov. But this time the chief of the General Staff surpassed himself. However, the defense minister cannot retort to his subordinate, the more so put him back into his place. He merely reiterates from time to time that there are no discords in the top military structures. A public scandal would be perilous for Mr. Ivanov, because all the authority in the army is de facto concentrated in the hands of General Kvashnin.

Mr. Ivanov's appointment as defense minister (for which, as it now turns out, he was totally unprepared owing to lack of relevant experience) resulted in just another case of diarchy in the Defense Ministry and allowed General Kvashnin to dictate his conditions. (...)

We should note that, despite last year's staff reshuffles in the Defense Ministry, General Kvashnin managed to keep his team intact. What's more, some of his subordinates were further promoted. Among General Kvashnin's proteges people in the know mention Lieutenant General Alexander Rukshin, chief of the Main Semistrategic Department, Colonel General Valentin Korabelnikov, chief of the Main Intelligence Department, chief of the Main Organizational and Mobilization Department Vladislav Putilin, Colonel General Ivan Efremov, Commander of the Moscow Military Distroct, Colonel General Vitaly Azarov, chief of the Main Disciplinary Department, Colonel General Igor Puzanov, Secretary of the Defense Ministry, and a number of lower-rank military officers, including the commanders of the elite Tamanskaya and Kantemirovskaya armor divisions. This segregation is certainly fairly conventional, for it may change depending on the situation. However, it is important to realize that General Kvashnin is backed by real forces, including the troops of the Moscow Military District and the army group in Chechnya (many officers serving in that group were appointed with personal approval of the chief of the General Staff).

Our sources say General Kvashnin's authoritarian traits have been bothering the Kremlin since the middle of 2001. It is no coincidence that FSB military counterintelligence departments closely watches the layout of powers in the top military leadership and collects information characterizing key military officers in the framework of the monitoring of the general situation in the Armed Forces. (...) In a sense, Vladimir Putin may be compared to Nikita Khruschev, who paid special attention to the moods among top generals and performed a rapid staff reshuffle in 1957 under the pretext of Marshal Zhukov's excessive ambitions.

(Translated by Andrei Bystrov)

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