Putin Elevates Northern Fleet to Status of Military District

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 7 – This week, Vladimir Putin signed a decree that was prepared last year elevating the status of the Northern Fleet to that of the country’s four other military districts, formalizing arrangements that have been in place, eliminating conflicts, and highlighting the Kremlin’s concerns about defending the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route.

            During his 20 years in power, Putin has regularly redrawn the borders and hence the numbers of his country’s military districts; but in every case until now, naval units in seas adjoining the military district were at least nominally subordinate to the MD commander. That has now changed.

            In fact, naval commands not only operated more independently of these MDs than might appear from the organizational chart but also exercised effective control over land forces adjoining the sea areas they were responsible for. Since the creation of the Western MD, the Northern Fleet has controlled land forces in four federal subjects (Murmansk and Arkhangelsk oblasts, the Komi Republic and the Nenets Autonomous District.)

            But the Northern Fleet’s lack of status as an MD led to conflicts that often went right up the chain of command. The new arrangement is intended, as of January 2021 to end those (ng.ru/armies/2020-06-08/8_7881_north.html, kp.ru/daily/27139.5/4231572/ and svpressa.ru/war21/article/267516/).

            Although some are speculating that other naval commands will be similarly elevated, that is perhaps less likely because the Northern Fleet in Putin’s thinking occupies a special place.  It is both the center of Russia’s submarine fleet, and it is responsible for protecting the Northern Sea Route and projecting Russian power into the Arctic.

            Putin’s action in this regard helps to explain two other developments in recent weeks: the push for the amalgamation of some or all of the federal subjects in what will be the new Northern Fleet MD and the dramatic increase in the number of articles in the Russian media talking about the Arctic as a new cockpit of conflict between Russia and the West.

            The first of these probably reflects the desire of the naval command to have a single land-based political unit under its control; the second almost certainly is part of the campaign the Northern Fleet has been waging to achieve this elevation in status.