KREMLIN UPSET BY ATTACK ON ITS ARMY POLICY

By Gareth Jones

MOSCOW, June 25 (Reuter) - Russia's government reacted with dismay on Wednesday to claims by a respected military man that President Boris Yeltsin had ruined the country's armed forces but opposition leaders rushed to General Lev Rokhlin's defence.

In an open address to Yeltsin published on Tuesday, Rokhlin accused the president of running down Russia's armed forces. He said Yeltsin had been personally responsible for the disastrous 21-month military intervention in Chechnya.

Rokhlin, a member of the pro-government Our Home is Russia party who heads the parliamentary defence committee, also appealed to army officers to stand up for their rights and to resist government plans to scale down the military.

A Defence Ministry official told Interfax news agency on Wednesday that Rokhlin's statement was a provocation aimed at derailing planned reforms.

``The ministry considers that only the speedy realisation of measures announced by Yeltsin for the reform of the armed forces can bring about an improvement in their situation,'' said the unnamed official.

Yeltsin has said he wants the armed forces to be cut to 1.2 million troops from about 1.8 million now as part of a long-term strategy to transform the ramshackle, conscript-based forces into a leaner, professional fighting machine.

Kremlin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky said on Wednesday Yeltsin was aware of Rokhlin's address and as commander-in-chief he was likely to respond in due course. He blasted the manner of Rokhlin's intervention.

``Such a move cannot facilitate a solution of the problems mentioned in Rokhlin's address,'' he told a news briefing, adding that improving conditions in the army would be the government's top priority this summer.

Since the fall of Soviet communism in 1991 the army has been dogged by chronic cash shortages. Officers often go months without pay and underfed conscripts have been reduced to begging in the streets. Suicides, thefts, murders and bullying of young recruits by senior officers have become commonplace.

Political wrangling has delayed urgent reforms that would cut bureaucratic waste and target spending on priority areas. Only last month Yeltsin sacked General Igor Rodionov as defence minister for demanding more money to implement the reforms.

The liberal daily Sevodnya suggested that certain generals might be using Rokhlin as their mouthpiece to put pressure on the Kremlin ahead of expected cuts in the military budget.

But Yeltsin's political foes hailed Rokhlin's address as a timely move motivated by concern for the national interest.

Former paratroop general Alexander Lebed, who came third in the first round of the presidential polls last summer but later jumped into Yeltsin's camp helping the Kremlin leader to win the second term in the runoff, said Rokhlin spoke for many Russians.

``The collapse of the Russian army is obvious today even for people who are far from military affairs,'' Interfax quoted Lebed, who again became Yeltsin's opponent after the polls and is now building his own nationalist party, as saying.

``The old age of Boris Yeltsin leaves no hopes for any positive changes in the difficult process of reforming the armed forces,'' Lebed said, clearly referring to health problems of the 66-year-old president who had a serious heart operation last year.

Communist Viktor Ilyukhin, the head of the State Duma lower house of parliament's security committee, said he was fully with Rokhlin: ``I am ready to sign up to every word of criticism.''

Ultranationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky agreed. ``Rokhlin is an honest man but in our country of idiots an honest general is considered a bad one,'' he said.

Rokhlin, who won widespread praise for his role in Russia's ill-fated military campaign in breakaway Chechnya, sits in the Duma as a deputy for the usually pro-government Our Home is Russia party, headed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

But he has become increasingly critical of the Kremlin.

One of Our Home's leaders, Duma deputy speaker Alexander Shokhin, said the party might consider expelling Rokhlin at a meeting set for June 30. He compared his address to Bolshevik agitation in the army on the eve of the 1917 revolution.

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Johnson's Russia List

26 June 1997

djohnson@cdi.org