Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 6 – General Valery
Gerasimov, the head of the Russian General Staff, says that the Russian
military will give preferences in promotions and assignments to those officers
who have combat experience, something that may make more in the military ready
to take part but also may reflect Moscow’s difficulties in getting a sufficient
number to do so.
Vladimir Mukhin of “Nezavisimaya gazeta”
reports on this announcement today under the headline “Syrian Experience will
Secure Success in Army Careers” that he argues represents one of “the
non-traditional means” the General Staff has adopted to address “cadres
problems” (ng.ru/politics/2017-02-06/2_6921_army.html).
In Soviet times, officers will
combat experience received preferment; and in the 1980s, Mukhin says, that
meant that those who had served in Afghanistan were the ones who moved most
quickly into senior ranks. After 1991, service in Russia’s two wars in Chechnya
gave officers a similar boost.
But during the time of former
defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov and his reforms, that tradition appeared to
have ended; and many officers with combat experience found themselves
sidetracked while those without it who were considered good administrators or
managers were promoted instead.
Now, with the fighting in Syria, the
pendulum has swung back to preferences for combat veterans, something that many
of Russia’s top generals, who were promoted because of their role in Chechnya,
favor not only on the principle that combat is the true test of an officer but
because that makes taking part in combat more attractive for military officers.
“It is no secret,” Mukhin writes,
that Serdyukov’s shift on this as on many other military matters made it more
difficult to recruit officers and left the Russian army today with a serious
shortage of junior officers. That is now
being remedied, he says, by such “unstandard” methods as boosting the rate of
promotion for those who go into combat.
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