Chief of General Staff, Colonel-General Yuri Baluevsky
Photo: Dmitry Dukhanin
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Generals Annoyed with Their Minister
Russia’s Defense Ministry officially refuted yesterday the information about frequent resignation reports lodged by generals. At the same time, communists stepped in to express their concern about privatization of land used for defense facilities and about stripping big groups of the military status.
Russia’s Defense Ministry officially refuted yesterday the information about any disagreement amid its chiefs and about the resignation reports lodged by the top-ranked officers to protest against decisions of defense minister. “Big-name resignation reports don’t exist,” the ministry said in the statement.
Early this week, quite a few editions reported about large-scale resignations of generals led by General Staff Chief Yuri Baluevsky. The given reason was the opposition to reforms initiated by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, including stripping certain positions of their military status, privatization of military assets, redundancy of ministry’s personnel.
But back from the scheduled vacation, Baluevsky attended yesterday the sitting of Military and Industrial Commission, which focused on the progress in the state order implementation and on the state armament program for 2011 to 2020.
Regardless, the analysts don’t think rumors on clashes amid the Defense Ministry’s leadership totally groundless. “The talks about contradictions between civil minister and generals are the splash of transition period,” explained Vitaly Shlykov, chairman of Defense Ministry’s Public Council Commission. “The minister brought a lot of civil officials with him, the officers are annoyed and grumbling.”
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 27, 2008
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