If Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov's reforms are successful, future generations will have no idea what Soviet-style regiments, divisions and armies are.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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Defense Minister Begins True Reform
Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced the beginning of the most radical military reform ever in post-Soviet Russia yesterday. Not only will redundant generals be retired (unsuccessful efforts to do that have been made before) and the military staff will be halved, the armies, divisions and regiments inherited from the Soviet Union will be reformed. Serdyukov’s successors also carried out reforms, with the result that Serdyukov inherited a reduced version of the enormous and outdated war machine created in Soviet times for global war.
Former Chief of the General Staff Yury Baluevsky wanted to replace the existing military districts with territorial commands (North, East and South) during the ministry of Sergey Ivanov. Directives were issued to that effect, but the project was abandoned when Baluevsky was dismissed. Now Baluevsky’s idea has been taken to its logical conclusion, with not only districts and armies being reorganized, but divisions and regiments as well. They will be replaced by districts, operational commands and brigades. A source in the Defense Ministry says that the mechanisms and deadlines for the reform are as yet unknown. The reform is sure to meet with resistance, the source added, but “the decision was made at the level of the highest state leaders.”
Serdyukov has already announced that the number of senior lieutenants and lieutenants in the Russian Armed Forces will be increased from 50,000 to 60,000 by 2012. The number of generals will be reduced from 1100 to 900. The staff of the Defense Ministry will be reduced from 21,813 to 8500 in the same period. Former Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov commented that “Victory in a limited theater of military action [i.e., in Georgia] convinced the country’s leaders that the presence of small mobile units is the recipe for success in any modern conflict. But only a big war will show the correctness of that decision.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 15, 2008
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