In uniform

Threat to reform

December 1, 2009 Alexander Golts

From some point it seemed to me that it was a matter of military reform, announced a year ago by the Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov, go badly. Contrary to official statements, they began to throw out of the army without the previously promised housing and monetary compensation of officers to be dismissed. Instead of starting the professional training of all junior commanders, who in the Armed Forces require more than one hundred thousand, the military department has concentrated on the training of 254 volunteers selected for two -year studies. If you create a professional sergeant corps at such a pace, then this will take years, that way, forty. But, I comforted myself, in Russia it is always like this - reforms are advancing only by trial and error, and the rake remain the main tool for cognition. The main thing is that at the organizational level a cross is placed on the concept of a mass mobilization army. Parts and compounds of incomplete composition will be eliminated, the army will get rid of the excess number of officers. This means that sooner or later the call will disappear by itself - as soon as it becomes clear that reservists cannot be called. There are no formations that can accept them, there are no officers who could command them, there are no weapons in order to provide them. In this case, the call is just a waste of money. And Serdyukov, a person who is already something, but can count money soon, will soon realize that he throws giant funds into the wind.

However, it turned out that in reality things are much worse. I understood this during the round table held last week called "socially significant tasks of forming a new appearance of the armed forces." The event was held under the auspices of the Council under the President of the Russian Federation on the development of civil society institutions and the Ministry of Defense. Someone, obviously, Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, ordered the generals to respect the questions of human rights activists if possible. And those, unlike journalists, had the opportunity to clarify and argue.

It turned out from the discussion that, contrary to the countless praise of the highest military leaders about the support of the reform, a serious threat loomed over it. The generals proudly confirmed that the Minister of Defense ordered actually to abandon more than modest achievements of the program to partially transfer the armed forces to a contract. All compounds of constant readiness will now be formed according to the “mixed principle”. Positions affecting combat readiness will be occupied by contractors, and the rest - conscripts. At the same time, Deputy Minister Nikolai Pankov said that the deadlines for bringing any of the brigades to combat readiness decreased from a day to 1 hour. At the same time, questions remained unanswered about what a wonderful means of combat enemy will be compounds, where at each specific moment in time (if we keep in mind that the period of the conscript is one year), half of the personnel will consist of soldiers less than 6 months. The combat readiness will, of course, only intensify that every six months half of the personnel will be quit. The fact that because of this is happening in the training centers, Valentina Levetkina, chairman of the Khabarovsk Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, said. It turns out that now they decided to cook truck drivers in three months - just so that in part they serve at least 9 months. However, the study methodology is such that it is not possible to teach a truck to drive in three months. It turned out on the exams that officers who pass exams for their subordinates were sitting at the wheel. It is curious, what will be the combat readiness of the connection when it will be provided by graduates of this training center ...

But the main thing is not even that. The generals could not refute the calculations of Vitaly Tsymbal, the head of the laboratory of the military economy of the Institute of Economics of the Transition period. According to his calculations, already this year the number of 18-year-old young men was equal to the number of staffing departments in the Armed Forces. Today, the call manages to support, getting those who were not called in past years. However, Tsymbal believes, in the next year and a half this reserve will be exhausted.

In response, the generals from the Main Organizational and Mobilization Administration did not even try to refute this data. They, as the instructions, were to say: everything will be in order if everyone who should be in the army by law. And then Major General Ivan Borodinchik Sogoryachy reported a completely sensational figure: annually 200 thousand (!) Young people are evading the agenda. And as soon as it is possible to hand these summons, everyone will be happy. First of all, this figure demonstrates the monstrous harm that calls to Russian society. Let's think - for several months a year, 200 thousand people are actually hidden in their country. These boys do not spend the night at home, their relatives are afraid to open the door. These young people cannot get any documents - because this requires a certificate from the military registration and enlistment office.

But the main thing is that the specialists from Goma did not reveal secrets: what secret methods they will resort to in order to cut their foreheads 200 thousand of the “sloppers” so necessary. All legal and illegal methods have already been used: the raids at the metro stations and in stadiums and ambushes at the apartments. If in the bowels of Goma they did not come up with anything new, then the number of slope will remain the same.

In this case, the situation with the setting of the Armed Forces can develop according to one of two scenarios. Optimistic: in fact, the Ministry of Defense agreed in advance with the fact that Russia would not have an army of one million military personnel. The armed forces will reduce to 500-700 thousand, without announcing this officially-there is no one to check in the absence of parliament. Everything would be nothing, but that means that constant readings will not be fully equipped again. And, therefore, the last of the signs of constant readiness will be lost.

It is much worse if the generals who hate both Serdyukov and the reforms deliberately leads the case to the second scenario - the collapse of the setting of the armed forces. This threatens a complete stop of reform and return to the mass mobilization army.

Photos of RIA Novosti