Moskovskiy Komsomolets 23 May 97 p 1

Commentary by Yuliya Kalinina: "His Trials Are Over. Radionov's Removal Was Easier than Grachev's"

The president made a decision to dismiss the defense minister and the chief of the General Staff. Publicly, with scandal, shame and dressing-down.

During yesterday's meeting of the Defense Council, the president put on them the entire blame for the absence of transformations in the Russian Army. "I assess," he says, "the level of your work as very low." You have done nothing, although right from the start you had clear instructions -- to do all that was necessary to reorganize the military. What was supposed to have been done and what is it that Rodionov has not done? There is only one answer -- cutting the army.

In order to lay off officers there should be money. The people cannot be thrown out onto the street without having paid them twenty monthly wages due under the law, without having provided them with apartments. There is no money for reductions, so we will not do any reduction, was the stance of humane minister Rodionov. But he was wrong, as transpires. The man who proved to be right happens to be Defense Council Secretary Yuriy Baturin, another reformer, who advocated a tough position -- to cut mercilessly and without having to pay for it. So he is the winner. However, it is difficult to judge objectively about the size of Rodionov's blame for the present state of the military. He stayed in the post as little as six months, and his inheritance is frankly not rich. Without money from the budget, he could hardly really rectify the position. Realizing this, he let it ride and was combating instead individual instances of evil in the shape of corrupt generals of the Semenov and Kobets type which, however, left t

he president cool. "Generals today are the main brake on military reform," Yeltsin underlined. They wear their shoulder boards, you know, but do nothing to change the face of the Russian army.... Evidently, the present meeting of the Defense Council should be seen as an enormous breach finally rammed through by Baturin in the wall of the military people's unorganized opposition to reforming the Armed Forces. To follow next are supposed to be decisive actions, dismissals, cuts, reincarnations, mergers of old structures, the birth of new ones. And all that free of charge. Who is going to be in charge of this, is anyone's guess. Obviously, someone of the "new-wave reformers" team. Civilian candidates who can realistically hope to become defense minister are Baturin himself and Deputy Defense Minister Kokoshin. Acting defense minister for the time being will be General of the Army Igor Sergeyev, commander in chief of the strategic forces, with whom Premier Chernomyrdin had an opportunity to meet during the cours

e of the recent inspection of combat readiness of our nuclear potential.

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Johnson's Russia List

23 May 1997

djohnson@cdi.org