#9 - JRL 6407
Navy Conditions Concerns Russia
August 26, 2002
By JIM HEINTZ
VLADIVOSTOK, Russia (AP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin visited a Pacific Fleet destroyer on Monday and said the Kremlin is working to improve conditions in the nation's troubled navy.
Like other branches of the Russian military, the navy has been plagued by financial problems and low morale since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hundreds of ships have been idled, others are in poor repair and exercises and other operations have been limited.
Its troubles came to wide public attention two years ago in the explosion and sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk and the apparently confused response to the crisis. Russian navy rescue workers were unable to open a hatch on the sunken wreck, but international divers succeeded days later.
Putin said the navy had been given particularly short shrift in recent years.
``The navy is in a difficult position,'' he said in Vladivostok, where the Pacific Fleet is based. ``The share of the navy in overall spending assigned to the armed forces has been too small'' and the government ``forgot about laying down new ships.''
``We have worked out a new program of rearming the navy, an absolutely feasible one,'' Putin said. ``As a result of implementing it we will not only preserve the navy but raise it to a qualitatively new level allowing it to carry out the tasks facing it.''
During his visit to the anti-submarine ship Marshal Shaposhnikov, Putin reassured the crew that their work is critical to the country.
``The Pacific Fleet was, is and will remain a guarantor of Russia's interests not only in the Far East but also in all parts of the Pacific,'' he said.
Aboard the ship, Putin met with Pacific Fleet Commander Rear Adm. Viktor Fyodorov and the commander of the Pacific district of the Federal Border Service, Col. Gen. Pavel Tarasenko.
He asked about the conditions for protecting the Russian border and interaction between the border service and fleet. Illegal immigration is a high concern in the Russian Far East, which has a long border with China and a short common frontier with North Korea.
He also commented on the Kremlin's efforts to introduce a professional army, and cautioned that the transition would take time. Not only do salaries have to be raised, he said, but apartments must be built to accommodate the servicemen.
Putin is in the middle of a six-day trip that is his first visit to Vladivostok, Russia's principal Pacific Coast city, since becoming president two and a half years ago.
Earlier in the visit, he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in talks that Putin said focused on improving economic relations with that country and he met with regional officials to discuss economic recovery in the Russian Far East.
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