Press summaries from

http://www.russiatoday.com

Segodnya

12 August 1997

Summary

Military analyst Pavel Felgengauer wrote about the concept of military reforms, recently approved by the president.

The Defense Ministry managed to persuade President Boris Yeltsin that the armed forces should be restructured according to a "ground-sea-air-space" scheme.

The author argued that this is absurd from the viewpoint of a professional military. The Strategic Nuclear Forces cannot be joined with anything else. Otherwise, the army will not be able to win a non-nuclear war, which has already been demonstrated by wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Officers in many garrisons remain absolutely indifferent to reform. Their only concern is whether or not the government fulfills its promise to pay off salary debts to the military by the Sept.1 deadline.

If everyone gets their money, military problems will be set aside for the time being, and the military opposition organization of Generals Igor Rodionov and Lev Rokhlin would remain a union of retired generals. If the pledge is not fulfilled, the servicemen's disappointment and indignation will result in mass protest.

The author questioned whether the system of payments to the military may ever work perfectly, because even the exact number of servicemen in the country remains unknown.

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Johnson's Russia List

#1120

13 August 1997

djohnson@cdi.org