#5
Moscow Times
August 1, 2002
Saber-Rattling No Solution
By Pavel Felgenhauer

Last Sunday, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov visited Kaliningrad, the main base of the Baltic Fleet, and told journalists that the situation in the Baltic region may destabilize when the former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania join NATO and the European Union.

Ivanov announced that Moscow would continue to maintain a strong naval presence in the Baltic Sea, and that the fleet will continue to control the Baltic Sea and defend Kaliningrad from outside attacks. There will be no further cuts in the Baltic Fleet and new ships will be provided to keep it battle-ready.

Moscow is at loggerheads with the EU about visa requirements for Kaliningrad-based citizens traveling through Lithuania to the Russian mainland. It's possible that Ivanov's belligerent rhetoric about the totally peaceful Baltic Sea again becoming a future theater of confrontation was an ill-advised attempt to add some military muscle to the debate. But no one is planning any attack on Kaliningrad, and the rusty old Baltic Fleet does not strengthen Moscow's bargaining hand.

In fact, this untimely belligerence may backfire.

For several years Russia has been arguing that the status of ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia should be improved before those countries are allowed to join NATO and the EU. The West partially agreed, especially since there was no visible threat coming from Russia.

Now Moscow is clearly putting political pressure on Lithuania to allow a visa-free corridor for Russian citizens through its territory and is threatening possible military or economic sanctions. The result will surely be the acceleration of the formal accession of the Baltic states into Western institutions to give them additional security guarantees, and Russian influence in the region will further decrease.

Today, more than 10 years after the end of the Cold War, Russia still has a fleet that -- on paper -- is second only to the mighty U.S. Navy. But the battle-readiness of the force is very low, especially its non-nuclear capabilities.

Russia has only one aircraft carrier -- the Kuznetsov. But the last time the Kuznetsov air wing flew from its deck was in 1998, when the ship traveled to the Mediterranean. Another voyage of a big Russian naval task force into the Mediterranean, led by the Kuznetsov, was planned for the fall of 2000, but the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine stopped it. (Many Russian naval officers still believe that the United States and NATO deliberately sunk the Kursk to prevent a strong Russian fleet from going south. It's also believed that the appearance of this flotilla near the Balkans in late 2000 would have somehow saved the Milosevic regime in Yugoslavia from collapse.)

The Kuznetsov was used during the Kursk salvage operation as a stop-off for helicopters, but its air wing stayed on terra firma. Now the Kuznetsov is in a shipyard for repairs and will not sail until 2004. Due to a lack of funds and apparently serious problems with the Kuznetsov's main engines, it's possible it will never do much sailing again.

Russia's best carrier pilot, General Timur Apakidze, plunged to the ground in his naval air force Su-33 at an air show near Pskov a year ago and died from his injuries. Apakidze was the first Russian pilot to take off and land on deck. Most experts agree his death was the result of too little flight practice.

This summer Ukraine allowed the Kuznetsov air wing to use the aircraft simulator airfield that the Soviets built in Crimea to do some simulated landings and takeoffs. But with no real sea practice for several years and no prospect of any in the immediate future, it's safe to say that Russia's naval air capability is zero.

It would seem pragmatic for our defense establishment to concentrate its limited resources on having at least one operational aircraft carrier group to fly the flag worldwide, if it is serious in its talk of preserving Russia as a naval power of any significance. Instead, resources are being spread thinly in a futile attempt to keep all former Soviet naval holdings alive, including the Baltic Fleet.

The military is stubbornly retaining a Soviet defense posture against all odds. This senseless doggedness is today in itself one of the main reasons for the further decline of Russia's international status and obviously contradicts President Vladimir Putin's stated pro-Western policies.

However, the Kremlin seems incapable or unwilling to put this to rights.

Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

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