#13
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
June 4, 2002
SECURITY COUNCIL AMENDING MILITARY REFORM PLANS AGAIN
The General Staff says the military is in "critical" condition
Author: Salavat Suleimanov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

THE SECURITY COUNCIL HAS DISCUSSED DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARMED FORCES TO 2010, WITH PRESIDENT PUTIN ALSO CONTRIBUTING HIS OPINION. ON THE ISSUE OF MILITARY DEVELOPMENT, THE GENERAL STAFF IS CURRENTLY TAKING THE OPPOSITE STANDPOINT FROM THAT OF THE SECURITY COUNCIL.

Battles among the top brass over the future of the Armed Forces

All Russia's military organizations, and particularly the Russian Armed Forces, are in a "critical" condition after eight years of "incorrect" and two years of "correct" reforms, according to Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin.

Kvashnin made the statement on May 30, on the eve of the Security Council meeting that discussed a draft document entitled "Fundamentals of the State Policy of the Russian Federation on Military Development to 2010".

The decision itself to do some additional work on these fundamentals is unprecedented for documents of this magnitude.

Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Vladimir Potapov confirmed what analysts had already said: military development plans have become outdated even before their implementation has been completed. According to Potapov, all current plans for developing Russia's military organization focus on the period to 2005. "Given the changes taking place in Russia and the rest of the world, we need to amend the plans and agree on the major directions for the period to 2010," Potapov said. It isn't hard to guess that several solutions to the problem were proposed at the Security Council meeting.

The president expressed his opinion - a definite opinion, for a change - on one of the issues. This concerns old debates between the Defense Ministry and other security structures. The Defense Ministry is annoyed about the armed formations of other security structures escaping extensive cuts, and sometimes even expanding, while the Army and Navy are endlessly cut and starved of funding. The debates became even more fierce in the light of the plans to cut army troop strength by a further 200-250,000 over the next two years. President Putin sided with the Defense Ministry, and promised "a steady reduction" of the military component of the other eleven ministries and departments concerned.

Cuts in the army will continue all the same, and Potapov says that its numerical strength will be brought down to 850,000 - 1,000,000 by 2010. The General Staff cites different figures, speaking of an even 1,000,000, the troop strength initially specified for the Armed Forces by 2005. Tellingly, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was absent from the meeting. He is always absent when matters are discussed on which the nation's political leaders disagree with the military.

The military is particularly concerned about the unprecedented high number of resignations from the officer corps, on top of planned troop strength cuts to the Army and Navy. More often than not, it is young officers who decide that enough is enough. Senior officers say that "we no longer have battalion commanders between here and the Urals, or regiment commanders beyond the Urals."

Senior officers attribute this situation to social insecurity. Kvashnin claims that salaries should be "more than doubled". It seems, however, that the president is of a different opinion. Opening the meeting, he reminded those present of the plans to double salaries of officers from July 1, 2002. He must have been misinformed, because officers' salaries will really rise only from January 1, 2003, at best.

In an attempt to persuade their political masters to continue raising the salaries of officers, Russian generals are using a new argument. They attribute the growing crime rate in the Armed Forces to exacerbation of the social problems. Kvashnin mentioned theft and embezzlement in the Armed Forces in his May 30 statement.

Kvashnin's thesis is supported by the Military Prosecutor General's Office, which is investigating thefts and other crimes committed by senior officers. One investigation involves the theft of over 1 million rubles meant for food purchases. Charges have been issued against Major General Mikhailov, chief of the food supply service of the Siberian Internal Troops District. Similar charges were issued against Mikhailov's counterpart at the Moscow Military District. Some senior officers have already been convicted. More than 28,000 infractions have been uncovered in the security structures in 2002 alone, and more than 700 criminal proceedings instigated. In utter defiance of the law, officers and warrant officers become involved in commercial activities. According to the data compiled by the Military Prosecutor General's Office, one-fifth of the crimes are committed under the influence of alcohol; one-eighth of the crimes are committed by groups.

It's almost impossible to assess the true crime rate in the Army and Navy at present. The most frequent crime involves cannibalizing military hardware for spare parts or valuable materials and selling them. Light weapons, ammunition, and explosives are stolen and end up in the criminal underworld. Law enforcement agencies are searching for more than 20,000 weapons missing from military units.

On the issue of military development, the General Staff is currently taking the opposite standpoint from that of the Security Council (i.e. Kvashnin versus Vladimir Rushailo). Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov is somewhere on the sidelines. He has not attended a single Security Council meeting where the structure of the nation's armed formations was discussed. It certainly seems as though it is time to put an end to these games. After all, they do not facilitate improving the situation of the Armed Forces.

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