Posted on March 15, 2009 - by Venik

Russian Military Reform

Putin and his cabinet have embarked on the most dangerous journey of their political careers: the 2009-2012 military reform. And by “dangerous”  I don’t mean just unpopular but life-threatening. The decision to cut nearly 200,000 senior officers, special forces, and intelligence operatives will have serious consequences for Russia’s internal stability. Essentially, over a relatively short period of time the Ministry of Defense will infuse the national economy with tens of thousands of unemployed, whose primary marketable skills are to spy and to kill. This move will coincide with the economic crisis and the rapidly shrinking job market. I think we can all see where this may lead.

So what is the master plan? The overall size of the Russian armed forces will be reduced from the current 1,130,000 to a cool million by 2011. Most of the cuts will affect junior and senior career officers. The number of command posts will be reduced from 355,000 down to 150,000. There will be one officer per 15 soldiers, sergeants and civilian contractors, and one general per 1,100 servicemen. In 2009 some 26,700 officers will reach retirement age and will be forced to leave. Another 30,000 officers will be forced to retire during 2010-2012. The number of vacancies will be reduced by 40,000.

A military officer in Russia is entitled to a pension if he served twenty or more years. Junior officers (under 20 year of service) are entitled to government-subsidized apartments. Real estate is very expensive in Russia (even by New York standards) and the prices of even the most modest of apartments in Moscow and other large cities are well outside the range of most military officers. After the dust settles in 2012, some 118,000 retired officers will either have no pensions and no subsidized apartments (58,000 junior officers served less than the required minimum of 20 years) or a pension but no place to live.

As you can see, the cuts are massive. It will definitely suck to be a Major in the Russian army in the next four years. Looking at these numbers you may be wondering why are there more Majors than Captains and more Captains than Lieutenants in the Russian army. The explanation is simple: traditionally, the Soviet army relied on reservists and conscripts to fill the ranks in time of need. And so you have fewer Lieutenants, because they only command the troops currently in service, while the number of Captains and Majors accounts for the expected swelling of lower ranks in time of war. There are divisions and regiments in the Russian army that are staffed at a minimum level (not actual combat-ready units) but are fully equipped (mostly with outdated weapons) and are designed to be activated in time of war to be filled with conscripts and reservists.

The entire purpose of the current military reform is to move away from this WWII-style division/regiment system to the NATO-like brigade structure. This transition falls in line with the ultimate goal of having volunteer-only armed forces, ergo, no conscripts and no use for the “ghost” divisions. This will make the Russian army much more effective in local armed conflicts and far less effective in an all-out global war. Every armed conflict involving Russia since the Second World War falls into the first category. However, unfading memories of the Second World War create big doubts among military experts and ordinary citizens about this reform. I find the arguments made by both sides in this debate nearly equally compelling, but I tend to lean toward the need to retain the Soviet-style structure of the armed forces, while still implementing the necessary personnel cuts over a longer period of time, and perhaps postponing the cuts altogether until the economic situation and the job market stabilize.

The main problem with the reform is that it lacks adequate financing. The plans were drawn up  before the global financial crisis and the funding earmarked for the reform is no longer there. Thus, according to the master plan, by 2012 the average military salary should be 125% of the average civilian salary. Salaries of Colonels and Generals will be increased from 80,000-100,000/year today to 120,000-150,000 by 2012. Military pensions will be increased from 50% of the base salary at the time of retirement to 65% by 2012 and 80% by 2020. Conservative estimates show that the defense budget will need to grow to 3-5 times its current level by 2012 to accommodate such lofty restructuring and rearmament plans. Just in 2009 the defense budget will need to grow some 50% (including a 26% increase in spending on new weapons) at a time of a deep economic recession. Needless to say, Russian military officers do not seriously expect the government to keep its promises and this well-founded lack of trust makes the situation even more volatile.

Army reform plan has been the white elephant of Russian budget planners since the early 1990s. Today Putin may have adopted the “now-or-never” attitude and intends to plough ahead regardless of costs and consequences. The timing is bad, but waiting for a better opportunity may make things even worse. With real estate prices falling in Russia the government may see this crisis as a good opportunity to provide the retired officers with housing at a substantially lower cost to the budget. Presently, the Russian army needs modern weapons more than it needs a hundred thousand Majors commanding fifty thousand Lieutenants in expectation of the “big one”. The dilemma of large and sloppy vs small and tidy has been haunting military planners for millenia. No empire – past or present – has been able to afford to have it both ways and still have money left over for bread and butter. Russia’s current economic reality offers only one option in regard to the military reform: to postpone. Again. As employment shrinks, the last thing the economy needs is tens of thousands of homeless and angry soldiers without pensions.

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