#13
Yezhenedelny Zhurnal
No. 25
July 2002
THE SHADOW THAT LAGS BEHIND
Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov disagree on every major issue
Author: Alexander Golts
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

SERGEI IVANOV BECAME DEFENSE MINISTER OVER A YEAR AGO, BUT NOTHING HAS IMPROVED YET. SOLDIERS VIEW THE ARMED FORCES AS A PRISON, WHILE OFFICERS LACK INITIATIVE AND ARE CORRUPT AND INCOMPETENT. THE MILITARY IS IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING A THREAT TO ITS OWN PEOPLE.

By spring 2001, no one in Russia had any doubt that President Putin intended to go ahead with the military reforms, and would not stand any nonsense. After all, he promoted his closest confidant - Sergei Ivanov - to defense minister.

As secretary of the Security Council, Ivanov had prepared the president's most important decisions - from establishment of seven federal districts to the new procedures for formation of the Federation Council - i.e. decisions directly related to the power hierarchy. The work on the military doctrine and on the concept of development of the Armed Forces to 2005 had been completed under Ivanov too.

Viewed almost as Vladimir Putin's alter ego, Ivanov was widely believed to wield absolutely unlimited powers. He promotion was supposed to put an end to the lengthy dispute between the previous minister Igor Sergeev and Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin. It was also supposed to restore discipline and the single chain of command in the military organization. No one, not even the reckless Kvashnin, was thought to have the courage to go over the head of Ivanov, Putin's personal friend.

Along with absolute power, Ivanov wielded material leverage as well. The old dream of the Russian military finally came true under Putin, and defense spending started creeping up.

Ivanov was promoted over a year ago, and observers already agree that all these huge resources have been wasted. Nothing has changed. The Armed Forces continue to deteriorate: armed deserters are so numerous that calling the phenomenon a mass exodus will not be much of an exaggeration. Corruption in the officer corps is at such unprecedented levels that even the statement of the Prosecutor General's Office - to the effect that the mine that killed dozens in Kaspiisk on May 9 had been obtained by terrorists from officers of the Russian army - failed to shock anyone.

Despite all promises of doubled pay, officers are doing all they can to quit the Armed Forces, the sooner the better. There are 50 military educational establishments in Russia, but a quarter of lieutenant positions remain vacant. As for senior officers, Ivanov himself doesn't think much of their professional skills. In short, soldiers view the Armed Forces as a prison, while officers lack initiative and are corrupt and incompetent. The military is in the process of becoming a threat to its own people.

Meanwhile, the president's closest confidant made the defense minister persists in saying that "There are lots of problems the reforms are supposed to solve. We should not try to tackle all of them at once. We singled out priorities therefore, and armaments are the top priority." Ivanov emphasizes that special attention is being paid to satellites, high-precision weapons systems, and reconnaissance- strike complexes. All this is supposed to mean that Russia (or rather its Defense Ministry) takes into account the existing tendencies and bears in mind the experience of the American operation in Afghanistan. It is logical. It should be noted, however, that 40% of the funds set aside for armaments are spent on research and design (and the rest on modernization of the items manufactured 20 - 30 years ago). It follows that Russia is spending money on the modern military hardware whose production will begin only after 2006. Experts already have some serious doubts that the Russian military-industrial complex will be able to produce the whole range of weaponry then. It means that the money invested in research now will be irrevocably lost.

And even if Ivanov is correct, who is going to handle all this sophisticated equipment? Apparently the conscripts among whom 30% do not have even secondary education and 14% are potential winos and junkies. All attempts to prove that salvation of the Russian army is in service by contract encounter Ivanov's resistance. Much too early for that, he says. Let us make the experiment with the 76th Airborne Division first, calculate the expenses on the nationwide scale, and only then proceed.

In the meantime, the president has a different opinion. He views the crisis in the Armed Forces as a pressing problem. Putin ventured this opinion in his address to the Federal Assembly and at the meeting with graduates from military academies not so long ago. Moreover, he even told his generals that he wanted to see calculations with his own eyes. The generals obliged. They sabotage the military reforms in an exquisite manner. Military financiers were ordered to prepare calculations in such a manner that even Putin would see at a glance that the country could not afford any professional army. Military financiers did not mind. It took only a few months for the cost of transition of a single division to service by contract to grow from 500 million (according to the calculations made last November) to the current 2.6 billion. The sum includes the cost of apartments for servicemen by contract and even their future pensions (not a single Russian department or structure, be it Prosecutor General's Office or Federal Security Service has ever demanded from the government apartments for absolutely all employees, not a single professional army in the world automatically assumes that absolutely every serviceman by contract will be entitled to a pension). The defense minister accepted the sum (2.6 billion) without qualms and even took it upon himself to acquaint general public with it. If the military reforms follow in the tracks of the experiment with the 76th Airborne Division, we may forget about them.

It isn't hard to guess why transition to a professional army scares Russian generals so badly. They are quite aware of the fact that a new Russian army, professional and compact (provided it is ever built, of course), will not need them, specialists in mobilization of conscripts by the million. But why would Ivanov think so? He, an intellectual from intelligence, former head of the analytical Federal Security Service? Why did Ivanov, the man who was supposed to become Putin's plenipotentiary representative in the Defense Ministry, become a representative of generals' interests in the Kremlin?

It seems that Ivanov has miserably failed to understand that his task is civilian control over the Defense Ministry. He must have taken his promotion as a cover. When these boring pro-Westerners demand a civilian defense minister, a true intelligence officer will play one.

In fact, a civilian minister alone is not sufficient for proper oversight. Defense ministries in the West are mostly staffed by civilians. It is they who make the decisions the military is supposed to obey. In Russia, however, the defense minister claims that "the majority of positions in the Defense Ministry should be held by the military" and doesn't even see that this is a trap. If the Defense Ministry remains a military department, then Ivanov is doomed to make purely technical decisions instead of political ones and take responsibility for these decisions as well. Like many other military personnel, lieutenant general Ivanov doesn't doubt his competence in military matters. "The problem is that he is too good an intelligence officer not to sense when you try to over-simplify things when explaining some complicated matters to him," says a senior officer. "And that's when he becomes angry."

It is probably because of this that Ivanov prefers generals who do not talk about complicated problems at all. Ivanov made Ground Forces Commander Nikolai Kormiltsev a deputy defense minister. (Kormiltsev is rumored to believe that all military reforms are restricted to whether a given military unit has a land plot where soldiers can grow their own potatoes and vegetables.) When secretary of the Security Council, Ivanov agreed with Kvashnin's suggestion to radically cut the Strategic Missile Forces. Intriguing against his enemy Sergeev, Kvashnin persuaded his political masters to have the Strategic Missile Forces reduced from 19 divisions to two. He claimed that Russia did not need the obsolete heavy missiles. Russia is now told that the heavy ICBMs will remain on combat duty, and that the previous decision was a mistake. The divisions are not going to be reduced, but the minister trusted Kvashnin and two years and a great deal of effort and finances were wasted...

In short, senior officers manipulate Ivanov. Sources in the General Staff claim that Kvashnin (who kept a low profile when Ivanov was made defense minister) is once again trying to go over Ivanov's head.

In the meantime, a professional military is not the only issue on which Ivanov and Putin disagree. Ivanov's statements on virtually all matters of international security conflict with Putin's. Last September, Ivanov said that he did not envisage - "not even in theory" - deployment of NATO troops in Central Asia. The following day the president said he did not see any problems with the arrival of US military bases there.

Ivanov: "If the policy of deploying a national missile defense is pursued, Russia will be forced to take adequate measures to protect its national security... They will concern improvement of strategic nuclear forces and other 'asymmetric' measures which reduce the effectiveness of the US missile defense."

Putin: "In our view, unilateral withdrawal from the ABM Treaty would be a mistake. If it happens, however, we are not going to start any anti-American hysteria."

Ivanov on NATO expansion: "The appearance of new NATO members in Europe, not subject to the existing arms control measures, will have a disastrous effect on the framework of treaties in general."

Putin: "Preventing Estonia's membership of NATO would be incorrect tactically and strategically. If Estonia wants that, let it join NATO."

Putin says at his press conference that some successes have been achieved in Chechnya, power structures are being restored, "Chechens themselves should defend Chechnya", and cleanup operations should be ended. On the following day Ivanov gathers journalists to inform them that 1,000 guerrillas under Aslan Maskhadov intended to overrun Grozny, and the raid was averted at the last possible moment.

Ivanov fails to keep up with the president, again and again. Putin and Ivanov entered the corridors of power believing that the state stands above all. It is because of this belief that Ivanov was so effective when construction of the power hierarchy was underway, when regional leaders had to be pacified and oligarchs kicked out.

The battle to save Russia eventually led Putin to the necessity for an alliance with the United States and the West. This is when his "shadow" detached itself. In his outlook, Ivanov is closer to the generals - who still think in terms of global wars - than to his supreme commander-in-chief. One of the analysts fairly close to the Kremlin explains this state of affairs in the following manner. When Putin was learning fundamentals of free-market economy as a deputy to Sobchak in the 1990s, Ivanov watched what was happening to and in Russia from the Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters in Yasenevo. Something similar had happened to another defense minister, Igor Rodionov, who wanted to create a Soviet-type military. Yeltsin dismissed him in a matter of months. Putin is more cautious in staff matters. He is particularly cautious when the matter concerns old friends and acquaintances, which means that Rodionov's group poses no threat to Ivanov. All the same, rumors that Ivanov is being geared for another promotion appear regularly.

(Translated by A. Ignatkin)

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