Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 28 – In a Moskovsky
komsomolets interview last weekend, Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu shwed
himself to be “the ideal bureaucrat of the era of late Putinism,” combining
official patriotism, deference to his boss, and a willingness to mislead the
country and the world about the situation in the sector he is responsible for,
Aleksandr Golts says.
The Moscow paper described the
minister’s remarks as showing how he and Putin have “saved the Russian army” by
agreeing “to stop lying” (mk.ru/politics/2019/09/22/sergey-shoygu-rasskazal-kak-spasali-rossiyskuyu-armiyu.html)
and then proceeding to cover the sad reality by doing just that, the
commentator says (echo.msk.ru/blog/openmedia/2509219-echo/).
In an essay that is one part
fact-checking and another a critique, the independent military analyst says
there is no question that the fighting capacity of the Russian armed services
has risen over the last decade, but the reforms that made that possible were
carried out by his predecessor, Anatoly Serdyukov.
Shoygu for his part has either
extended them or undermined them, but he can’t claim authorship, Golts says.
Serdyukov understood that the main
problem of the Russian military was that it remained attached to “the conception
of mass mobilization which is not realizable in present-day circumstances,” a
model that meant most units were hollow and were expected to be filled up by
reserves at times of crisis.
The former minister “liquidated”
these hollow institutions and brought the paper structure of the military into
line with reality. But unlike Shoygu,
Serdyukov had a limited goal: “securing military supremacy ono the post-Soviet space”
and being in a position to ensure “victory in local conflicts which could arise
on Russia’s borders.”
For him, “strategic containment”
would rest with the country’s nuclear arsenal, Golts says. But the situation is
different now. With the rise of a new cold war in the wake of Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea and with Russia facing a NATO many times stronger
than itself, the defense ministry has had no choice but to return to idea of
mass mobilization.
Shoygu has thus created “dozens of
new divisions” even though the real number of those under arms has grown
nowhere near proportionally and even though the reserves that are supposed to
be available remain largely “mythical.”
The current minister is thrilled to announce the production of more officers
but it is unclear whom they will command.
In this situation, the current
minister has had no choice but to insist on the continuation of the draft even
though Putin himself has suggested it should be on the way out. There is simply no other way even to approach
the numbers the troops mass mobilization requires at current levels of
spending.
At the same time, the analyst continues,
“One cannot but agree with Sergey Shoygu that sudden checks are the most
important indicator of military readiness. But the minister fails to note that
this instrument has been used only once – in February 2013” and that when it
was “the results were really catastrophic – not one measure was fulfilled.”
Shoygu’s talk about “’not lying”
remains only words. Indeed, he
demonstrates that by constantly contradicting himself. In 2017, he said the military would be taking
delivery of 203 planes; a year later, he said it had received only 126. Two
years ago, he said the navy would be 35 new vessels; it received only 25. He
claims the defense orders were filled “100 percent.” In fact, they have been
met “in the best case” only by about 70 percent.
Sometimes Shoygu’s lies seem
unnecessary because they are so absurd that no one could possibly believe them,
Golts says. For example, he says that 90 percent of Russia’s military pilots
served in Syria; but in fact, “this is impossible in principle” because at
least a third are trained to fly the Mig-29 rather than some other plane – and the
Mig wasn’t used in Syria.
Another thing he said about the Syrian
campaign isn’t a lie but it may be even worse, an acknowledgement of the breakdown
of the system which builds weapons. Shoygu says that combat there led Moscow to
end production of 12 kinds of weapons, but any serious public oversight and
testing program would have meant that would have happened well before.
But in many ways, Shoygu’s worst lie
in the interview is his insistence that Moscow didn’t order Russian soldiers to
fight in Ukraine. Instead, he insists, they went there voluntarily and more than
that in their free time. That lie lifts
any responsibility from the shoulders of commanders but it also undermines the
military spirit of those in uniform.
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