#4
Moscow Times
July 18, 2002
Leaking, Lobbying, Looting
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Moscow is a deserted town in late July and August. Parliament is closed down for a lengthy recess, top bureaucrats tend to spend as much time at their dachas as possible and foreign diplomats leave to escape the scorching heat and gas fumes of downtown.

As August approaches, all serious official business seems to be put off for more pleasant times.

But behind the scenes there's plenty of action: The federal government's draft budget is currently being finalized and should be presented to parliament by August 15.

The Kremlin fully controls both chambers of parliament, and the budget proposals the government puts forward are no longer seriously amended. If any ministry or department wants to push through its spending plans, now is the time to make a last concentrated push. The military is the biggest recipient of taxpayer money in Russia, and it is now lobbying frantically to get even more -- both concertedly and every ministry that has military divisions, individually.

A long litany of complaints and disclosures regarding the terrible state of the military has been made public recently. Last month, General Anatoly Kvashnin, the chief of General Staff, surprised the nation by announcing that the military is in a "post-critical state" and that it has more or less degraded into a rabble of thieves and crooks. This week an official report was leaked to the press describing the misery and poverty in which the rank and file live.

The report states that 46 percent of servicemen's families live below the poverty line. In the Interior Ministry and the Federal Border Service, 53 percent and 57 percent of families, respectively, are officially impoverished.

It turns out that the much publicized military personnel pay hike enacted this month did not help much because at the same time officers lost a number of tax and utility payment privileges. Kremlin propaganda has for some time emphasized President Vladimir Putin's role in pushing through the military pay hikes, apparently to increase his popularity in the ranks. It may be that this propaganda will backfire if servicemen start to link their misery to Putin personally.

The disclosure of depressing information about the state of the military is obviously linked to the current budget drafting process. But the military is indeed underpaid and underfinanced. The ordinary rank and file and their families spend more than 50 percent of their official incomes on basic foodstuffs, while those better-off are the crooks who steal and sell military equipment, and those engaging in business activities to the detriment of their service, etc.

Of course, the generals making these shocking disclosures and masterminding leaks about the state of the military are not themselves paupers. The top brass is also not simply claiming poverty to get a bigger slice of the national budget pie, as their counterparts in the United States and Europe often do. Russia's generals are playing a much more sinister game: They have successfully managed to sidestep the issue of military reform and substitute it with the problem of defense financing.

Last week, General Vasily Smirnov announced that it will be impossible to create an all-volunteer military. The experiment to make the 76th airborne division in Pskov all-volunteer has proven to be too expensive, Smirnov told reporters, so the draft should continue indefinitely. Smirnov added: "The draft helps prepare citizens to defend the fatherland and form a reserve for mobilization."

Of course, the result of the Pskov experiment has been all too predictable. The military is actively sabotaging any attempts at reform. However, without reform, with millions of servicemen and some 100,000 colonels in active service all told, there will be neither decent pay and service conditions nor a disciplined, modern force.

It seems the absence of reform and the deepening crisis in the military, which is actively perpetuated and exploited by the selfish top brass, is increasingly a grave political problem for Putin's Kremlin. It's not that the disgruntled military is ripe for mutiny already, but mass protests -- secretly supported by the top brass -- and a further breakdown of discipline are possible if better men are not put in command soon. The problem is where to find better men within Russia's corrupt military elite?

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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