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  • Russia: What Stands Behind Presidential reforms of the armed forces

    Agency WPS
    DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
    August 20, 2004, Friday

    WHAT STANDS BEHIND THE PRESIDENTIAL DECREE ON REFORMING OF THE ARMED
    FORCES

    After publication of decrees on reforming of the Federal Security
    Service, Interior Ministry and other security agencies of the
    country, before going on vacations President Vladimir Putin issued
    the decree entitled "Issues of the Defense Ministry." This decree
    approved the new statute of the Defense Ministry. The statute of the
    General Staff of the Armed Forces formerly signed by Boris Yeltsin
    lost its power. According to Putin's decree, the General Staff
    becomes a structural division of the Defense Ministry. Commenting on
    this decree, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov emphasized that "The
    President preserved the role of the General Staff as coordinator of
    development and buildup of the entire military organization and not
    only the Defense Ministry." Ivanov fully denied the previously
    published information saying that after changing of the top-ranking
    officers the influence of the General Staff would decrease
    noticeably. According to Ivanov, only a few divisions of the General
    Staff will be transferred to the central staff of the Defense
    Ministry. First of all, these are maintenance and human resources
    services having no direct relations with the role of the General
    Staff.

    At his meeting with senior commanders of the Volga-Urals Military
    District, Ivanov said, "The General Staff retains the main
    operational department, the main intelligence department, the main
    organizational and mobilization department and some other main
    departments." The Defense Minister stressed, "The tasks set for the
    General Staff by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief are to think what the
    Armed Forces should be like and to plan buildup of not only the Armed
    Forces but also the entire military organization of the state
    including the Interior Forces, Border Guards and other troops."

    It seems that these steps should strengthen the one-man command in
    the Armed Forces and hence authority of the Defense Ministry.
    However, it is obvious that Ivanov has made reform of the central
    military governance bodies and has included the General Staff into
    the structure of the Defense Ministry due to personal reasons. It was
    known to everyone that former Chief of the General Staff Anatoly
    Kvashnin and the incumbent Defense Minister had different views on
    the role and meaning of the general Staff in the military
    organization of the country. Kvashnin was striving for increase of
    its role and actually wanted to separate the General Staff from the
    Defense Ministry. Kvashnin said that the General Staff should command
    the troops and the Defense Ministry should supply the troops with the
    necessary things and exert civil control over them. Now the Defense
    Ministry both commands and controls the troops including fulfillment
    of such functions through the General Staff, which is its structural
    element. Time will show how efficient this will be but it is already
    clear that a person being far from the troops has been appointed on
    the post of the Chief of the General Staff. This is Colonel General
    Yury Baluyevsky, who has practically no experience of commanding of
    large military formations of the size of an army, military district
    and so on. Organization of the military inspectorate, the only
    controlling body in the Defense Ministry, failed to solve the
    problems of improvement of combat readiness of the Armed Forces.
    Crimes and theft still take place in the Armed Forces. There is
    practically no one who can protect servicemen except for the military
    prosecutors. The due control over actions of commanders is absent.

    All this leads to growth of crime among offices. Thus, according to
    Chief Military Prosecutor Colonel General of Justice Alexander
    Savenkov, in the current year alone almost 20 commanders of military
    units, 43 officials of food, material supplies and financial services
    were taken to court and 35 of them were already stated guilty and
    sent to prison. The general notes that unfortunately there are facts
    of theft and service power embezzlement practically in all military
    districts and branches of Armed Forces.

    According to Savenkov, among the people taken to court is Director of
    the Yekaterinburg Artillery Institute Major general Shpangel, former
    director of the border guards department of the group of the Russian
    Federal Security Service in Armenia Lieutenant general Aboimov. Among
    the sentenced there is also director of the food service of the North
    Caucasus Military District Colonel Serkin, who has misused the powers
    for two years in purchase of food for the troops. Buying food
    products of poor quality at excessive prices he incurred damage
    bigger than 34 million rubles. Director of the food base of the Far
    Eastern Military District Lieutenant Colonel V. Ivannikov and
    director of the food service of the hospital of this district V.
    Voichik were sentenced to long terms in May. In ten days of October
    2002 alone, these officers wrote false information in the documents
    and stole food products worth 1.3 million rubles. The General
    Prosecutor's Office disclosed these crimes. Facts of misspending of
    money in the Defense Ministry are regularly revealed by the
    Accounting Chamber. The military are somehow afraid to speak about
    their own sins. It is not beneficial for officers of the Defense
    Ministry to wash their dirty linen in public; that is why control
    over observance of laws in the Armed Forces on the part of the
    top-ranking officials of the Defense Ministry is reduced.

    The President reduced the number of deputy defense ministers to four.
    The Defense Minister is allowed to have two senior deputies among
    these four. Senior deputy defense ministers are Chief of the General
    Staff Yury Baluyevsky and Colonel General Alexander Belousov, who
    also has no experience of commanding of a military district. In
    capacity of deputy commander of a military district Belousov worked
    only for four years. It is also already known obviously who will be
    ordinary deputy defense ministers. It is very likely that commander
    of logistics will remain General of the Army Vladimir Isakov and
    commander of armament will remain Alexei Moskovsky. Hardly anything
    will be radically reformed in the departments subordinated to the
    Defense Ministry. Three months are allocated for the entire reform of
    the Defense Ministry. This period is too short. In any case, new
    services will appear during this period. These will be troops
    quartering service, financial service, human resources policy service
    and ideological service. Of course, they will not be born on an empty
    place. The staff of the deputy defense minister for construction and
    quartering and the main military budget and financing department will
    be transformed into service. Officers of the main ideological
    department will be unluckiest because their department will be
    included into the main personnel department. Reforms will also touch
    on the staff of the defense minister.

    It is planned that money allowances of officers and employees of the
    central staff of the Defense Ministry will be increased
    significantly. But will their activities become more efficient? Is it
    possible that this will create a gap between those who serve in the
    troops and those are serve in the so-called "Arbat Military
    District?"

    In the post-Soviet history the Defense Ministry has been reformed for
    five years. This means that beginning from 1992 a new structure of
    the Defense Ministry has been approved once almost every 30 months.
    The structure changed but the contents of the troops governance
    somehow remained the same. We do not wish everything happen according
    to the old scenarios this time again.

    Translated by Pavel Pushkin
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