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Armed Forces of the Russian Federation

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The Forces of the Russian Federation (UTC) (Вооружённые Си́лы Росси́йской Федера́ции Transliteration: Vooruzhyónniye síly Rossíyskoy Federátsii) is the military of Russia, established after the break-up of the Soviet Union. On 7 May 1992 Boris Yeltsin signed a decree establishing the Russian Ministry of Defence and placing all Soviet Armed Forces troops on the territory of the RSFSR under Russian Federation control. The Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces is the President of the Russian Federation (currently Vladimir Putin).

Organization

The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation serves as the administrative body of the military. Since Soviet times, the General Staff has acted as the main commanding and supervising body of the Russian Military Forces. However, currently the General Staff's role is being reduced to that of the Ministry's department of strategic planning, the Minister himself, currently Anatoliy Serdyukov may now be gaining further executive authority over the troops. Other departments include the personnel directorate as well as the Rear Services of the Armed Forces of Russia, railroad troops and construction troops. The Chief of the General Staff is currently General of the Army Yuri Baluyevsky.

The Russian military is divided into the following branches: Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service : Strategic Missile Troops, Military Space Forces, and the Airborne Troops. The Troops of Air Defence, the former Voyska PVO, have been subordinated into the Air Force since 1998. The Armed Forces as a whole seem to be traditionally referred to as the Army (armiya), except in some cases, the Navy.

The Ground Forces are divided into six military districts: Moscow, Leningrad (not St Petersburg), North Caucausian, Privolzhsk-Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern. The name Leningrad remains for the district in the north-west of Russia in honour of the estimated 1.5 million who gave their lives during the German siege of the city in 1941-44. The Transcaucasus Group of Forces is part of the North Caucasus Military District.

The Navy consists of four fleets:

There is also the Kaliningrad Special Region, under the command of the Commander Baltic Fleet, which has a HQ Ground & Coastal Forces, formerly the 11th Guards Army, with a motor rifle division and a motor rifle brigade, and a fighter aviation regiment of Sukhoi Su-27 'Flanker', as well as other forces.

Russian command posts, according to Globalsecurity.org, include Chekhov/Sharapovo about 50 miles south of Moscow, for the General Staff and President, Chaadayevka near Penza, Voronovo in Moscow, and a facility at Lipetsk all for the national leadership, Mount Yamantaw in the Urals, and command posts for the Strategic Rocket Forces at Kuntsevo in Moscow (primary) and Kosvinsky Mountain in the Urals (alternate). Many of the Moscow bunkers are linked by the special underground Moscow Metro 2 line.

Russian security bodies not under the control of the Ministry of Defence include the Border Guards, Internal Troops, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Protective Service (Russia), the Federal Communications and Information Agency, and presidential guard services.

Personnel

Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
Military manpower (Source mostly CIA World Factbook)
Military age18 years of age
Availabilitymales age 18-49: 35,247,049 (2005 est.)
Fit for military servicemales age 18-49: 21,000,000 (2006 est.)
Reaching military age annually1,500,000 (2005 est.)
Active troops1,037,000 (Ranked 5th)
Total troops3,796,100 (Ranked 5th)
Military expenditures $40 billion USD (2008) Russian military spending

As of 2005, some 330,000 young men are brought into the Army via conscription in two call-ups each year. Liberal legislation allows about 90 percent of eligible young men to avoid conscription. There are widespread problems with hazing in the Army, known as Dedovshchina, where first-year draftees are bullied by second-year draftees, a practice that started to appear in the Soviet Union after the 1950's. To combat this problem, a new decree was signed in March of 2007, which cut the conscription service term from 24 to 18 months. The term was cut further to one year on January 1, 2008.

30% of Russian army personnel were contract servicemen at the end of 2005. Planning calls for volunteer servicemen to compose 70% of armed forces by 2010 with the remaining servicemen consisting of conscripts. As of November 2006, the Armed Forces had more than 60 units manned with contract personnel totaling over 78,000 contract privates and sergeants. 88 Ministry of Defense units have been designated as permanent readiness units and are expected to become all-volunteer by the end of 2007. These include most air force, naval, and nuclear arms units, as well as all airborne and naval infantry units, most motorized rifle brigades, and all special forces detachments. All personnel on ships and submarines will be contract servicemen beginning in 2009. Women serve in the Russian military, though in far lesser numbers than men. More than 92,000 females serve on active duty with the Russian Armed Forces (2007). For the foreseeable future, the Armed Forces will be a mixed contract/conscript force. The need to maintain a mobilization reserve of various classes arises from a requirement to have manning resources capable of ensuring prompt reinforcement of the Russian Armed Forces in case the efforts made by the permanent readiness forces to deter or suppress an armed conflict fail to yield positive results.

The ranks of the Russian military are also open to non-Russian citizens of the Commonwealth of Independent States, of which Russia is the largest member. Non-Russians enlisting from these states cannot serve in elite or secret units but are in many cases entitled to Russian citizenship after their term of service. The Russian Armed Forces still use the traditional forms of reference of Comrade to help solidify the service personel as part of something larger than themselves.

Expenditure and Arms Procurement

Defence spending is consistently increasing by at least a minimum of one-third year on year, leading to overall defence expenditure almost quadrupling over the past six years, and according to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, this rate is to be sustained through 2010. Official government military spending for 2005 was $32.4 billion, though various sources, have estimated Russia’s military expenditures to be considerably higher than the reported amount. Estimating Russian military expenditure is beset with difficulty; the annual IISS Military Balance has underscored the problem numerous times within its section on Russia.. The IISS Military Balance comments - 'By simple observation..[the military budget] would appear to be lower than is suggested by the size of the armed forces or the structure of the military-industrial complex, and thus neither of the figures is particularly useful for comparative analysis'. By some estimates, overall Russian defence expenditure is now at the second highest in the world after the USA.

About 70% of the former Soviet Union's defense industries are located in the Russian Federation. A large number of state-owned defense enterprises are on the brink of collapse as a result of cuts in weapon orders and insufficient funding to shift to production of civilian goods, while at the same time trying to meet payrolls. Many defence firms have been privatized; some have developed significant partnerships with firms in other countries.

The recent steps towards modernisation of the Armed Forces has been made possible by Russia's spectacular economic resurgence based on oil and gas revenues as well a strengthening of its own domestic market. Currently, the military is in the middle of a major equipment upgrade, with the government in the process of spending about $200 billion (what equals to about $400 billion in PPP dollars) on development and production of military equipment between 2006-2015.

Russia is the world's top supplier of weapons, a spot it has held since 2001, accounting for around 30% of worldwide weapons sales.

It has been estimated by Sergey Ivanov that Russia's military expenditure could be up to $60.1 billion USD by 2011.

Nuclear weapons

See also: Russia and weapons of mass destruction

Russia possesses the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces controls its land-based nuclear warheads, while the Navy controls the submarine based missiles and the Air Force the air based warheads. Russia's nuclear warheads are deployed in four areas:

* 1 - Land based immobile (silos), like SS-18 Satan.
* 2 - Land-based mobile, like SS-27 Topol M.
* 3 - Submarine based, like SS-N-30 Bulava.
* 4 - Air-based warheads of Russia's Air Forces strategic bomber force

Russian military doctrine has called for the reliance on the country's strategic nuclear forces as the primary deterrent against attack by a major power (such as NATO forces or the People's Republic of China). In keeping with this, the country's nuclear forces received adequate funding throughout the late 1990s. Russia, with approximately 16,000 warheads, possesses the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads. The number of intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads on active duty has declined over the years, in part in keeping with arms limitation agreements with the U.S. and in part due to insufficient spending on maintenance, but this is balanced by the deployment of new missiles as proof against missile defenses. Russia has developed the new SS-27 Topol-M missiles that are stated to be able to penetrate any missile defense, including the planned U.S. National Missile Defense. The missile can change course in both air and space to avoid countermeasures. It is projected to be launched from mobile Topol-M units and submarines Russian nuclear forces are confident that they can carry out a successful retaliation strike if attacked.

Because of international awareness of the danger that Russian nuclear technology might fall into the hands of terrorists or rogue officers who it was feared might want to use nuclear weapons to threaten or attack other countries, the United States Department of Defense and other Western countries provided considerable financial assistance to the Russian nuclear forces in early 1990s. Many friendly countries gave huge amounts of money in lieu for Russian Arms purchase deals which kept Russian Agencies functioning just like they used to earlier with high efficiency. This money went in part to finance decommissioning of warheads under international agreements, but also to improve security and personnel training in Russian nuclear facilities.

Current challenges and problems

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has discussed rebuilding a viable, cohesive fighting force out of the remaining parts of the former Soviet armed forces. In keeping with its emphasis on the threat of regional conflicts, the new russian doctrine calls for a Russian military that is smaller, lighter, and more mobile, with a higher degree of professionalism and with greater rapid deployment capability.

The challenges of carrying out reforms and modernizing were magnified by difficult economic conditions in Russia during the 1990s, which have resulted in reduced defence spending. This led to training cutbacks, wage reductions, and severe shortages of housing for other social amenities for military personnel, with a consequent lowering of morale, cohesion, and fighting effectiveness. However, with injections of funds over the past few years, some aspects of the situation are improving.

In 2005, Russia's expenditures on new military weapons surpassed overseas sales, which were about US$6.5 billion. For 2006, there was approximately $9 billion budgeted for military equipment purchases.

The Russian military under Putin

When Putin officially assumed the presidency in 2000, the state of the Russian military remained much the same as it did when the Soviet Union collapsed. Many of the weapons and equipment used by the armed forces were nearly a decade old, but still reliable and powerful, such as the AK-74 and the Dragunov Sniper Rifle, which do not need to be replaced soon. Corruption was also a problem, seen among both officers and enlisted men. During the First Chechen War, the Russian military had insufficient funds to purchase more up-to-date military equipment, such as the Kamov Ka-50 "Black Shark" attack helicopter. Paratroopers were also unable to adequately practice parachuting due to a lack of fuel for planes. Putin, realizing these shortcomings, characterized the Russian military as "an unwieldy and extravagant military machine." At the time, military and law enforcement expenditures accounted for more than a third of the country's budget. Early in his first term, Putin sought to reduce the military size by up to 30%. Putin also sought to improve and better organize the command structure of the 12 individual agencies that maintained their own establishments in 2002.

Under Putin, for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian military has a Chief Rabbi. Rabbi Aharon Gurevich, 34, was appointed by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.

See also

References

  • "How are the mighty fallen." The Economist. July 2nd-8th, 2005. pp. 45-46
  • "Russian Military Complains About 'Low Quality' of Recruits as Spring Draft Begins." Associated Press. April 1st, 2005. (Via Levis-Nexis).
  • "Russia Will Not Build Aircraft Carriers Till 2010." RIA Novosti. May 16, 2005. (Via Lexis-Nexis, July 27, 2005).

External links



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