Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Shoygu Perfect Embodiment of the Putin Bureaucrat Today, Golts Says


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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