St. Petersburg Times

JUNE 30 - JULY 6, 1997

BANKRUPT ARMY CAN ONLY AFFORD TO TALK ABOUT REAL REFORMS

By Pavel Felgenhauer

Pavel Felgenhauer is Segodnya's defense and national security affairs editor.

TODAY, the rank and file of the Russian army are more than ever bewildered, not only by the mounting pay arrears but also by uncertainty over what President Boris Yeltsin and his new reform government intends to do next. The gloomy career prospects in the army are now undermining overall morale more than day-to-day hardships. And the signals coming from the Kremlin are not at all reassuring: The media are reporting plans for drastic cuts in personnel and funding. So officers, accustomed to ruthless, Soviet-style implementation of administrative decisions, are expecting the worst: random discharge without any decent compensation or benefits.

Yeltsin signed a decree this month that established two new Defense Council commissions. The first, to be headed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, has been charged with working out a military reform program. The other, headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, will draft proposals aimed at stabilizing the army's finances.

Most observers see these new commissions as the first step in introducing some elements of civilian control over the military. It has been reported that liberal reformers are taking over the army from conservative generals and will soon introduce long-awaited reforms. Yeltsin also gave the Defense Council the authority to approve top personnel appointments in the Defense Ministry. At first glance, the decree seems to have boosted the general influence of the Defense Council and its secretary, Yury Baturin.

But the significance of these changes should not be overestimated. The new Chernomyrdin and Chubais commissions are not regular government agencies. They are simply two more interdepartmental commissions that cannot "run" military reforms or regulate the allocation of defense budget money on a micro-level. Chubais, as first deputy prime minister in charge of appropriating all Russian government finances and at the same time finance minister, already controls defense spending.

Chubais' chairmanship of the new interdepartmental advisory commission adds very little, if anything, to his already broad powers. In fact, interdepartmental commissions are formed not to solve problems, but to spread out political responsibility until no one is actually accountable for anything. The Chernomyrdin and Chubais commissions will present their findings to the Defense Council, which is in its own right an interdepartmental consultative body. Defense Council decisions can become law only by presidential decree. The actual execution of these decrees is not the responsibility of the Defense Council but of the departments and ministries involved. Baturin does not have the ways and means to control the implementation of executive decisions on a daily basis.

Baturin was the chairman of the Presidential Commission for Top Military Posts and Ranks for several years, and he explained to me how this commission worked. The Defense Ministry, Interior Ministry, Federal Security Service or Federal Border Service would nominate some person for rank promotion or some top military post appointment. The committee representing the various departments and ministries would invariably vote "yes," and the appointment would be approved.

Political players in the Kremlin understand that no genuine military reform is possible in today's Russia because there is no money to carry it out. The promised "military reform" can only be a crisis management attempt to restrain a military mutiny caused by the de facto bankruptcy of the Defense Ministry. This means that the generals, not civilians, will continue to run the Russian army.

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Johnson's Russia List

30 June 1997

djohnson@cdi.org