The restoration of Russia's military power is a myth that is beneficial to the ruling elite of Russia and the West, but has nothing to do with reality. This is stated in the report of the Institute of National Strategy “Results with Vladimir Putin: Crisis and Decay Russian army”, which was prepared with the participation of prominent military experts.

The main authors of the report are political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky, President of the Institute of National Strategy Mikhail Remizov, General Director of the INS Roman Kareev, Head of the Department of the Institute of Military and political analysis Alexander Khramchikhin, head of the Center for Military Forecasting Anatoly Tsyganok - note that one of critical tasks research is to show that the myth of Russia's military power has nothing to do with reality. “It is necessary to admit the truth, no matter how bitter it may be: contrary to official propaganda, the Russian Armed Forces are in the deepest crisis, which was most seriously aggravated under President Vladimir Putin. Moreover, the unfavorable trends in the development of the military sphere in the “Putin era” became largely irreversible,” the report says.

The authors of the study note that in recent years, Putin's Kremlin has done a lot to create a myth about the "revival of Russia's military power" to hardly the Soviet level. At the same time, the created legend is very popular in the West, supported and distributed by politicians and the media of a number of G7 countries, which allows foreign military functionaries to demand from their parliaments an increase in allocations for military needs and explain to their peoples different kind large-scale military operations or preparations for them. This myth is actively supported by the legend that Russia is ruled by a “Chekist corporation”, which, according to experts from the Institute for National Strategy, may exacerbate negative trends.

The Kremlin does not take into account the Chinese threat and exaggerates the military power of NATO in Europe

Meanwhile, the authors of the report draw attention to the fact that no military construction in the state is possible if the political leadership of the country has not formulated views on what tasks the Armed Forces (AF) will have to solve, i.e. what type of wars and with what enemy(s) the Armed Forces should be prepared for. For Russia, this issue remains relevant until recently.

The experts point out that two official documents in which in question on the geopolitical position of the Russian Federation, military threats to the Russian Federation and the state of the RF Armed Forces - "Military Doctrine Russian Federation”, approved by presidential decree in 2000, and “Actual tasks for the development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” - are not specific, and some points look very controversial.

In particular, experts note that, judging by official documents, the United States (and possibly Japan) is considered the only potential adversary in the Far Eastern strategic direction, while China is not considered as such, since it allegedly has neither the opportunity nor the need (due to long land border) conduct amphibious assault operations against the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, according to the head of the department of the Institute of Military and Political Analysis Alexander Khramchikhin, in the east of Russia it is the threat that should be taken into account. military expansion China, which is guided by the concept of "strategic borders and living space".

As noted in the report, the concept of "strategic borders and living space" was developed to justify and legitimize the conduct of offensive military operations by the Chinese Armed Forces, and is based on the notion that population growth and limited resources cause natural needs to expand space to ensure further economic activity state and increase its "natural sphere of existence". At the same time, China's long-term program for the development of China's armed forces assumes the formation of armed forces capable of "winning a war of any scale and duration using all means and methods of warfare."

The authors of the report note that although this concept does not directly name the direction in which China's "strategic boundaries of the living space" will expand, it is quite obvious that it can only be Russia, primarily its eastern regions, which have a gigantic territory and natural resources with a very small and rapidly declining population.

At the same time, Alexander Khramchikhin draws attention to the fact that in September 2006, China held an unprecedented ten-day exercise of the Shenyang and Beijing military regions of the People's Liberation Army of China (PLA, official name Armed Forces of China), the two most powerful in their potential of the 7 Chinese military regions. It is these districts that are adjacent to the border with Russia, Shenyang opposes the Far East, and Beijing - the Siberian military district of the RF Armed Forces.

At the same time, during the exercises, units of the Shenyang Military District made a throw at a distance of 1000 km to the territory of the Beijing Military District, where they held a training battle with units of this district. The objectives of the exercises were to develop the skills of maneuvering army formations at a great distance from their bases and to increase the level of management of the rear support of troops. According to experts, similar scenario exercises can only be considered as preparation for war with Russia, and it is the offensive, not the defense, that is being worked out.

On the other hand, as noted in the report, the idea of ​​NATO as the main potential military adversary of the Russian Federation today seems very doubtful. According to experts, official Kremlin propaganda often misleads the public about the dynamics of development of the NATO Armed Forces in the regions adjacent to the Russian Federation. According to analysts, the grouping of the North Atlantic Alliance in Europe since the end of the Cold War has undergone a radical reduction, and the reduction continues. So, at the beginning of 1990, the armed forces of 16 "old" NATO members had in Europe a total of 24,344 tanks, 33,723 armored combat vehicles, 20,706 artillery systems (artillery systems) with a caliber of more than 100 mm, 5,647 aircraft, 1,605 helicopters. At the beginning of 2007, the armed forces of 22 NATO countries (16 "old" and 6 "new", former members of the Warsaw Pact Organization, ATS) had in Europe a total of 13,514 tanks, 26,389 AFVs, 16,042 artillery systems, 4,031 aircraft, 1,305 helicopters . At the same time, there has been a significant reduction military group USA in Europe. In this regard, according to experts, the preservation of the CFE Treaty is more expedient for the Russian Federation than its destruction, since Moscow, firstly, has sufficient growth potential within the quotas provided by the treaty, and secondly, it is interested in the fact that the existing military disparity between forces of Russia and NATO countries in Europe did not take on an overwhelming character.

Analyzing official documents, experts come to the conclusion that the military-political leadership of post-Soviet (Yeltsino-Putin) Russia in the period from 1992 to 2007 did not develop a strategically clear and historically specific answer to the question of why Russia needs the armed forces and, accordingly, what they should be. be. The authors of the report believe that, based on existing documents, such as the “Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation” (2000) and “Actual Tasks for the Development of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation” (2003), it is impossible to conduct military construction adequate to the current international situation. The “Putin era” turned out to be no more productive in this regard than the period of his predecessor’s rule, analysts conclude.

The crisis of the military-technical equipment of the Russian army

The authors of the report also draw attention to the fact that a comparison of the current state of the main types of the RF Armed Forces with their state at the end of the 1990s indicates an unequivocal aggravation of the crisis in the military-technical equipment of the Russian army in recent years. Analysts note that the total budget expenditures on defense for 2000-2006 are only insignificantly (about 15% in dollar terms) higher than similar average expenditures in the period from 1993-1999, when the economic opportunities of the state, due to the unfavorable commodity situation, were significantly ( immeasurably) more modest than today. At the same time, the volume of weapons and military equipment received by the army at the expense of these expenses is significantly lower than in the 1990s, which is due to a dramatic increase in corruption.

According to experts, the crisis state of the Strategic Nuclear Forces (SNF) causes the greatest concern. In particular, their massive reduction, the unification of their structure on the basis of suboptimal and vulnerable models of weapons, the accelerated degradation of the naval component of the strategic nuclear forces.

According to the authors of the report, during the period from 2000 to 2007, strategic nuclear forces lost 405 carriers and 2498 charges. During the reign of Vladimir Putin, only 27 missiles were produced, i.e. more than 3 times less than in the "dashing" 1990s, and 1 Tu-160, i.e. 7 times less than in the 1990s. “Thus, if in the 1990s the strategic potential inherited from the USSR, on the whole, was kept at the same level, then since 2000 its reduction has been taking place, taking on a landslide character. Moreover, the trends in the development of the situation should be recognized as unambiguously negative,” experts say.

At the same time, in the field of conventional weapons, as the report says, there is a significant (several times) decrease in the volume of purchases compared to the period of the 1990s, the disruption of state rearmament programs and the degradation of the content of these programs themselves. Among the most striking discrepancies between official propaganda and the real state of affairs, the authors of the report cite the words of former Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who said that Russia would increase the number of its strategic bombers to 50, although 79 units are currently in service.

According to experts, the current state arms program for the period 2006-2015 raises a lot of questions. The authors of the report believe that it is not clear what justifies the number and types of weapons and military equipment being purchased, as well as the feasibility of this program, given that all previous programs were frustrated.

In particular, it is not clear whether it will be possible to purchase the 1,400 T-90 tanks planned by this program (for the implementation of the program for this class of weapons, the rate of purchases must be increased 6 times compared to the current one), why they are purchased in precisely this quantity (according to the aforementioned CFE only to west of the Urals, Russia may have 6350 tanks), how expedient is the purchase of these particular tanks, which, according to experts, cannot be considered truly modern. Experts found similar "bottlenecks" in other points of the program.

In particular, the authors of the report also find the situation with the adoption of a new attack helicopter to replace the Mi-24 extremely strange. Experts note that back in December 1987, the results of the competition were summed up, in which the Ka-50 defeated the Mi-28. In 1995, by decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the Ka-50 was put into service and released in a series of 5 units. 2 helicopters of this type in 2001 successfully participated in the hostilities in Chechnya. However, in 2004 it was officially announced that the Mi-28 in the amount of 50 units would go into service. It remains unclear why such a decision was made, what determines the number of purchased aircraft (according to the CFE Treaty, the Russian Federation can have 855 attack helicopters only to the west of the Urals). At the same time, it should be noted that so far not a single serial Mi-28 has been put into service, although the arrival of the first vehicles in the unit was reported in mid-2006.

The authors of the report also draw attention to problems in the Russian Navy. Experts state that, as in the 90s of the XX century, the most serious problem for the Navy is the lack of maintenance of ships. Because of this, there is a write-off of ships that could remain in the ranks of the Navy for another 10-20 years. As an example, experts cite the nuclear missile cruiser pr. 1144 "Admiral Nakhimov", which has a huge combat potential. It was put into repair in 2001, which, with sufficient funding, could have been completed in 3-4 years. However, the ship is still under repair, which is almost not funded. Most likely, one of the best surface ships of the Russian Navy will be decommissioned in the near future, the authors of the report believe.

Analysts note that since 2000, the supply of new ships to the fleet has dropped sharply. 3 more units were completed, laid down under the USSR: 1 submarine pr. 971 ("Cheetah"), 1 missile boat pr. 12411 and 1 minesweeper. At the same time, the submarine pr. 949A "Kursk", commissioned in 1995, was lost.

Of the ships laid down in the 1990s, 6 boats pr. 10410 and the Saint Petersburg submarine were completed, in the last 2 years another 2 submarines of this type were laid. Submarine "St. Petersburg" is currently undergoing tests, which are delayed due to serious technical problems. The submarine "Severodvinsk" has been at the shipyard for 14 years. Judging by the statements of a number of representatives of the Navy, even if this boat is completed, it will remain in a single copy. In light of this fact, the laying of 3 RPK CH pr. 955 described above is especially surprising. The construction of missile boats requires the simultaneous construction of at least the same (optimally doubled) number of multi-purpose submarines to ensure the actions of the RPK CH. In the context of the absolute superiority of the US Navy over the Russian Navy in surface ships, the absence of multi-purpose submarines also makes the deployment of RPK SN at sea in combat conditions impossible.

At the same time, experts note that in the post-Soviet period, the Russian military-industrial complex has lost many technologies and entire generations of qualified personnel. These losses, analysts believe, are gradually becoming irreplaceable. The main factor that allowed the industry to survive (according to at least, in part), was its reorientation to the foreign market and the export of arms. This had, however, ambiguous strategic consequences, increasing the likelihood that military-industrial complex enterprises would lobby for the production of obsolete samples not only for export, but also for the RF Armed Forces. At the same time, experts draw attention to the fact that at present practically no new types of weapons have been created, and the so-called latest developments were invented in Soviet times. At the same time, there is a danger that after the creation of large military-industrial holdings, internal competition in the military-industrial complex will disappear, which can only exacerbate the existing negative trends.

The professionalism and social security of the Russian army raises big questions

Analyzing the condition of the personnel of the RF Armed Forces, the experts state that it can be assessed as even more difficult and “inaccessible” (A.I. Solzhenitsyn) than the state of armaments and military equipment. According to the authors of the report, the main problems in this area are the demotivation of servicemen (associated, not least, with the significant restriction of the social rights of servicemen during the “blessed” period of Vladimir Putin’s rule) and their deprofessionalization.

As stated in the report, at present we have to state a very low level of training of the officer and general corps (including the highest command staff). In the Air Force, where the level of combat training can be clearly quantified (the number of hours of "flight"), the situation is critical. Experts note that the infamous Major Troyanov, who crashed on the territory of Lithuania in September 2005 on a Su-27, had an annual flight time of 14 hours - he lost his course, largely due to lack of flying practice. In general, the lack of flight practice has led to a sharp increase in the accident rate of aviation. There will soon not be a single sniper pilot in aviation, there are almost no 1st class pilots. In 10 years, only pilots of the 3rd class will remain, mainly at the age of 37-38 and older.

However, as stated in the report, military science without the generation of new ideas on the part of the military leadership, she went into a dead pen. In the Combined Arms Academy (the former Frunze Academy) there are only 20 active colonels - doctors of sciences, who are still teaching. At that time, until 1991, up to 100 doctors of sciences worked here. In Moscow, almost 90% of students and teachers of military academies work day and night in order to earn additional income.

According to expert estimates, about a third of graduates of military schools will take off their shoulder straps and use diplomas outside the army. 83.3% of current lieutenants do not intend to serve until age limit. Today, graduates of military departments come to the positions of junior officers civil universities("biennials"). According to the military leadership itself, they, officers called up from the reserve, are already up to 50% in the troops, which indicates big problems in the personnel of the Armed Forces.

The report also notes that it is extremely difficult to judge the real scale and nature of combat training in the RF Armed Forces. Official statistics on the number of exercises conducted are not made public, and official statements only emphasize that it is constantly growing. If we talk about the teachings that were covered in the central media, then most of them were, first of all, advertising campaigns. That is, it combined the maximum information effect with the minimum scale of the parts involved and unconvincing legends, the authors of the report believe.

At the same time, experts note a rapidly growing outflow professional officers(graduates of military universities) from the Armed Forces and their replacement by officers called up from the reserve. Also, the current state of the Armed Forces, according to analysts, characterizes the absence of any systemic solutions for the transition to professional principle recruitment of non-commissioned officers, the absence of which is one of the main reasons for the moral and legal decomposition of the grassroots army environment.

The report also draws attention to the disadvantaged position of the Armed Forces and army officers in a number of other power structures manifested in the social and personnel policy of the state; the growth of property and social disproportions within the Armed Forces themselves.

According to analysts, it is adequate to assess the state of the army social sphere allow even the most general statistics, according to which 36% of military families are below the poverty line, 52% (!!!) Russian officers work additionally, including 29% - on a permanent basis (mainly as night watchmen, security guards, employees of private security companies), 24% of officers are forced to have additional earnings to earn a living. In almost every fifth officer family, the main source of livelihood is the salary of a wife or other family member.

According to experts, the introduction of the contract principle of recruitment separate parts, produced in 2000-2007, did not lead to an increase in the quality of the personnel of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Rather the opposite. The replacement of draft recruiting with contract staff exacerbates one of the most unfavorable trends in social development army: a tendency to lumpenization of the armed forces.

The results of military construction over the past 8 years do not cause optimism

According to the authors of the report, in general, the trends in the field of military construction in the Russian Federation clearly indicate that in the foreseeable future the RF Armed Forces will lose the ability to ensure the country's security from external aggression. “Apparently, the process of degradation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, which in essence remained a grandiose fragment of the Armed Forces of the deceased USSR, has assumed an irreversible character. To change the current situation, it is necessary to create new concept military building, based on an assessment of real external threats to the Russian Federation. On its basis, new approaches should be formed to the formation of the command and control system and structure of the Armed Forces, military-technical policy, the principles of service by personnel, and the organization of combat training. Proceeding from this, military construction in the Russian Federation should be carried out. Unfortunately, the current political situation in the country does not give any reason to assume that such a concept will be created and implemented,” experts believe.

According to analysts, the military construction of the past 8 years has de facto given priority to the development of infantry units over the development of units based on high-tech types of weapons (in particular, almost all “continuous readiness units” receiving priority funding are infantry units). There is reason to believe that in the near future the basis of the RF Armed Forces will be hired infantry, whose main task will be to fight not against external threats, but against its own people. The armed forces of the Russian Federation run the risk of acquiring exclusively police functions and becoming an integral part of the repressive apparatus.

As the report says, “military building is inseparable from state building. This is doubly true for Russian history, in which the state of the army has traditionally been and remains one of the unmistakable indicators of the state of the state. According to analysts, the best that has been done so far in the field of defense policy of post-Soviet Russia can be seen as an attempt to prevent and delay the final destruction of the USSR Armed Forces. More precisely, that part of them (far from being the best in everything), which was inherited by the Russian Federation from the perished Soviet Empire.

“Military construction in the proper sense of the word has not yet been on the Russian agenda. It is the task of the future, and the near future, if we are to survive as united country. Given that the means and forms of warfare for recent decades changed markedly and Russian society and the state are fundamentally different from the Soviet ones, the ideology of future military development can hardly be formulated in terms of reforming/modernizing the remnants of the Soviet military legacy. It will have to be about building new Armed Forces from scratch, adequate to the new stage in the development of Russia's statehood, as has happened more than once in Russian history, ”the authors of the report believe.

The creation of new Armed Forces, which is the only possible and historically justified alternative to the process of "controlled dying" of the USSR Armed Forces, is possible only if a qualitatively new generation of statesmen comes to power in Russia. The fate of the Russian army depends entirely on probable, but by no means guaranteed changes in the fate of the Russian government. In the fate of Russia itself.

We have no superfluous grounds for historical optimism. But we still have the right and duty to hope, the authors of the report conclude.

I warn you right away, there are a lot of letters. But it makes sense to read. Even if you never served, and the army for you is a waste of taxpayers' money.
Taken from here: http://shurigin.livejournal.com/160964.html
http://shurigin.livejournal.com/160712.html#cutid1

Defense Minister Serdyukov's military reforms are costing Russia dearly.

Which of the ancients very accurately said: “He who does not learn the lessons of History will very soon be deleted from History!”

It somehow turned out that the entire analysis of the war that took place in South Ossetia focused on the actions of troops in the conflict area. Newspapers and magazines write about the actions of the army. TV programs and talk shows are dedicated to them.

Of course, this analysis is extremely important. And needs to be done correct conclusions, both from the mistakes made by the troops on the battlefield, and from the successes and successes of our army.

But at the same time, the actions of another key participant in these events, the top military leadership of the army and the main military control body, the General Staff, somehow fell out of the zone of attention. But without an analysis of their actions, any conclusions about the war will not be complete. Therefore, it makes sense to close this gap and tell what actually happened in Moscow during the days of the South Ossetian crisis.

… HOW IT WAS IN MOSCOW?

On August 8, 2008, the Main Operational Directorate and the Main Organizational and Mobilization Directorate found literally words - on the street ... On this day, following the strictest directive of the Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov, the departments were engaged in moving. A dozen KamAZ trucks lined up at the entrances, and the property of the two main departments of the General Staff, packed in boxes and bundles, was loaded into them.

The news that Georgia launched a military operation against South Ossetia, many officers learned only from the morning news. By this time, the warning system, which had been functioning smoothly for more than forty years, was dismantled. There were simply no duty officers in departments and services, since there was nowhere to be on duty. There was no one to notify the officers. Therefore, there could be no question of any arrival on alarm of officers and the immediate “inclusion” of the GOU or GOMU in the situation. There was no one and nowhere to join.

At the same time, the GOU itself had been without leadership for two months. The former head of the GOU, Colonel-General Alexander Rukshin, was dismissed in early June for disagreeing with Anatoly Serdyukov's plans for a sharp reduction in the General Staff. During this time, it was not leisure to find a new head of the GOU Serdyukov and the chief of the General Staff Makarov. The acting head of the GOU, the first deputy of Rukshin, Lieutenant General Valery Zaparenko, was forced to combine several posts in one person, which could not but affect the state of affairs in the GOU.

All this was aggravated by the fact that by this time the GOU and GOMU were completely cut off from the troops. In the premises cleared for repairs, not only the entire ZAS communication, but even the usual “Erov” communication was already turned off, and it simply had not yet been carried out in the new building. As a result, at the most dramatic moment of the Tskhinvali drama, the Russian General Staff lost command of the troops.

At the same time, no one canceled the move itself, and the work had to be deployed in fact on wheels. As a means of communication with the troops, several conventional open long-distance telephones were used in the few offices that were designated for the temporary placement of ministerial advisers. But most of all, ordinary “mobile phones” helped out, from which officers and generals negotiated with their colleagues from the North Caucasus Military District for their own money.

The working groups deployed in any more or less suitable premises of the former headquarters of the Joint Forces of the Warsaw Pact. In dressing rooms, locker rooms, backstage, in gym. One of the directions of the GOU turned out to be sitting in the orchestra pit.

Only by the end of the second day was it possible to somehow restore command and control of the troops and expand work. But this confusion caused great human losses and errors.

Thus, the new Chief of the General Staff until last moment he did not dare to give an order to the troops to start a military operation. After the Georgians started the war, the command of the peacekeepers, the duty general of the Central Command Center and the commander of the North Caucasus Military District repeatedly went directly to the chief of the general staff with reports that our peacekeepers were suffering losses, that a city with civilians was being destroyed, that immediate assistance was needed and brought to the action of the plans for repelling aggression that were available for this case, but the NGSH dragged on, continuously “specifying” from the top political leadership what the scale of the use of force should be, although the political decision had already been made by that moment.

It is precisely with this that the delay in bringing in troops is connected, which cost our peacekeepers several dozen killed soldiers and officers.

The first directive sent to the troops was so limited that almost immediately it required a new one to be supplemented. According to the first directive, the troops sent to South Ossetia were actually left without cover, since the directive concerned only units and formations of the North Caucasian Military District ...

It was his fault that there was inconsistency between the branches of the armed forces. Having no experience in organizing interspecific interaction at the most crucial moment, the chief of the general staff “forgot” about the Air Force.

The directive to the troops of the North Caucasian military circle left, but the directive to the Air Force command was not sent. It was "remembered" only when the troops, having passed the Roki Tunnel, came under attack from Georgian aircraft. And the Air Force had already, as they say, "from the wheels" to enter into the operation. This was one of the reasons for such high losses in aircraft.

Then, in the same way, they "remembered" the Airborne Forces and the directive went into airborne headquarters. This explains the fact that the most mobile troops of the Russian army were actually in the rearguard of the military operation.

It is completely incomprehensible why, on the eve of the war, when information was continuously received about the aggravation of the situation around South Ossetia, the leadership of the General Staff did not decide to deploy a central command post, which had every opportunity to control troops in the conflict area, during the relocation of two key departments, but all the time of the war he worked in the usual "duty" mode, only monitoring the situation, while the GOU and GOMU were actually cut off from the troops?

This war showed that the "taste" approach to the selection of the Chief of the General Staff - the key figure for command and control in a combat situation - is unacceptable. The excitement of Minister of Defense Serdyukov, poking his finger at the map with a proposal to bomb “this bridge”, is humanly understandable, but it has nothing to do with strategy and operational art, which, in fact, decide the fate of the war. At the most crucial moment, the necessary professionals were not in place ...

At the same time, Mr. Serdyukov very cleverly placed all the responsibility for the losses on those whom he himself had put in a catastrophic situation.

So, at the debriefing at the General Staff following the results of the Georgian campaign, he hesitated nothing, put all the blame for the confusion of the beginning of the war on the officers and generals sitting in front of him in the hall, whom he himself actually threw into the void.

At the same time, for the first time in the history of the General Staff, the Minister of Defense of Russia publicly simply switched to a mat. Without embarrassment in expressions, from the podium, he gave a dressing down to the leadership for the large losses of personnel and equipment.

Apparently, Serdyukov has just such an idea of ​​​​how to communicate with the "little green men" - this is exactly how the minister's inner circle - all sorts of advisers and assistants call the military among themselves.

I note that not a single Minister of Defense, starting with People's Commissar Tymoshenko, publicly allowed himself such rudeness ...

Why did we win?

Because the troops and headquarters were preparing for this war.

Because since the spring, when the situation around Tskhinvali began to deteriorate sharply, the General Staff began to develop an operation to force Georgia to peace. It was these tasks that were worked out at the spring and summer exercises of the North Caucasus Military District.

We won because the headquarters at all levels had developed detailed plans in case this war broke out. And the merit in this is the very GOU, which was actually defeated by Mr. Serdyukov.

We won because in the chaos of confusion and confusion, there were those who took responsibility. Who, in the absence of clear and precise instructions from Moscow, decided to start acting according to the plans that had been worked out.

But high losses in people - 71 people were killed, equipment - more than 100 units and 8 aircraft - this is the price that the army paid for the voluntarism and tyranny of some top officials.

One can imagine what a terrible moral defeat for the new president of Russia, Medvedev, would be a military failure in South Ossetia, as if it hit the prestige of Prime Minister Putin. But we avoided it with great difficulty - if we missed another 2-3 hours and Tskhinvali would fall, the Georgians would cut the Transkam and we would have no one to save ...

BIG POGROM

Such a frank failure of the work of the General Staff was the last and logical result of a whole chain of erroneous decisions taken by Mr. Serdyukov as Minister of Defense.

You can talk about them for a very long time, but in order not to spread “like a tree”, it is worth tracing the story of the ill-fated repair to the very origins, which will allow you to understand the motives of the actions of the current Minister of Defense and the style of his work.

Let's start with the fact that the building of the General Staff is one of the newest buildings in the complex of the Russian Ministry of Defense. It was delivered in 1982.

Huge marble panels with a retrospective of the battles of the Russian and Soviet armies were created by the most famous artists. Finishing the building with marble, Ural stone, serpentine and granite guaranteed at least fifty years of operation of the building without major repairs.

At the same time, work on its arrangement and modernization continued in the building itself.

Just two years ago, renovations were completed on the floors occupied by GOU and GOMU. All offices were connected by a special fiber-optic network, which guaranteed complete secrecy of information exchange, the most modern communication was carried out here. For rooms where servers were deployed and other equipment was installed special systems microclimate, deployed the most modern system fire extinguishing, all rooms were reliably shielded from any external penetration. AT total over $100 million was spent on this renovation.

A few more million were spent on the renovation of the "ministerial" floor before the arrival of the former Minister of Defense Sergei Ivanov. Then a major overhaul was carried out here with a complete replacement of furniture and all office equipment.

It would seem that after such a repair, the new Minister of Defense, and even with the laurels of a "reformer", God himself ordered to plunge headlong into the work of reforming the army, forgetting about own good and abundance.

But it turned out the opposite.

For some reason, Minister of Defense Serdyukov decided to start the reform with himself, or rather with his apartments, or more precisely, with their expansion to a scale never seen before. Even in the era of the USSR, when our army numbered more than four million "bayonets", the apparatus of the Minister of Defense occupied half the floor of the new building of the General Staff. Now, at least, they will take one and a half.

But this is understood! After all, it is only the colonels of the GOU or GOMU that can sit four or five people in one office, and the “girls” of Serdyukov, as the assistants to the Minister of Defense call each other among themselves, do not want to sit more than one. In addition, the volume of premises necessary for the easy breathing of the “girls” and “boys” of the minister cannot be compared in any way with those in which the “little green men” are accustomed to live and work - the officers next to whom they work. Therefore, since last autumn, nimble gentlemen began to snoop around the floors and offices of the GOU and GOMU, presenting themselves either as designers, or architects, or foremen, who measured and recorded something.

And in the spring, repairs began. Yes, not just repairs, but repairs to all repairs! Not a trace remains of the former Soviet marble and granite luxury. Crushed by the sledgehammers of the ubiquitous "guest workers" from the Central Asian republics, who, in a strange way, without any verification, gained access to one of the most secret objects of the Russian army, all the panels and all the cladding turned into a pile of rubble.

At the same time, part of the “guest workers” actually lives in the building being renovated. It got to the point that one of the halls of the GOU was turned by devout Muslims from the construction teams into a branch of the mosque and in the evenings builders gather there with rugs to jointly “Allah Akbar!” celebrate the strict fasting days of Ramadan. According to the guards, the Muslim chants in the dark building of the General Staff sound so unusual that they cause one to be taken aback...

At the same time, one cannot help but recall the fate of the first president of Chechnya, Akhmat Kadyrov, who was blown up with a land mine, which was walled up in the wall of the sports box of the stadium during construction. Who and how controls the work of devout Muslims is unknown. But the scale of the renovation is amazing.

Literally everything is being redone - from the front entrance, to which Mr. Serdyukov deigns to drive up (a special gallery is now attached to it, protecting it from prying eyes), stairs, to elevators and, of course! - a complete replacement of the unique oak furniture, which was brought especially for the minister from warehouse. This furniture seemed to the minister not corresponding to his status, and he ordered to replace it with a more suitable one. But here it is difficult to argue with him - in what - in what, and in furniture our minister is a real dock!

And then came the turn of the GOU and GOMU departments deployed here. Despite all the justifications and explanations, both departments were ordered to collect belongings and move to "temporary" premises.

The fact that these premises were completely unprepared to receive such serious structures did not bother the Minister of Defense at all, just as he did not care that they had neither communications nor conditions for normal operation. He didn’t even care that there was no secrecy and closure from technical penetration, that there were no repositories for top-secret documents, of which more than one thousand units are registered with the GOU and GOMU. That there is not even an alarm system in the premises where hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment was brought. In response to all the explanations of the military, Serdyukov only ironically shrugged his shoulders, they say, stop making people laugh with his "secrecy"! Repair must be started in a timely manner! Superintendents are our everything!

And, as mentioned above, on August 8, the officers and generals of the GOU met the war, carrying property on their humps to the KAMAZ trucks of the rear. And behind their backs, the same silent Asian guest workers were already smashing walls and ceilings with hammers, tearing apart optical fiber and ivy electronic security blocks into cakes, knocking down the "cubes" of air conditioners and communication racks.

Widows, orphans and parents of soldiers and officers who died in Georgia now know what this thoughtless haste of the army cost.

But I think very few people know the amount that this ministerial “repair” costs the Russian taxpayer. And it's worth voicing it. 10 BILLION (!!!) rubles have already been allocated for the repair of only seven floors of the General Staff building, but, as they say, the financiers are not the final figure. It is possible that it will grow by another quarter ...

It was officially announced that this transfer is “temporary” and after the repair of the ministerial floors everything will return “to normal”. However, the officers have no particular illusions about returning back. They have already announced that part of the General Staff building will be transferred to the office of VTB Bank, and in the other part, shops and a sports and fitness complex for the staff of the Ministry of Defense will be opened. All for the same "girls" and "boys" Serdyukov.

Well, the GOU and GOMU will be left with what remains. Moreover, very little will remain from the GOU and GOMU by this moment. Mr. Serdyukov has already announced that they will be reduced by 60% to save public funds and optimize. For example, in the same GOU, out of 571 officers, 222 will remain.

In general, the new minister's approach to "saving" money is distinctive.

In order to change clothes for the parade of ten thousand soldiers and officers of the ceremonial calculation, the money was found instantly. At the same time, one set of uniforms from Yudashin costs the Ministry of Defense 50 thousand rubles. The overcoat from this set costs 12 thousand rubles - as in a good boutique! And for an ordinary uniform tie, the Russian taxpayer pays Yudashkin's company as much as 600 (!!!) rubles. At the same time, part of the uniform, by a strange coincidence, is sewn in the city of St. Petersburg - the hometown of our minister. But to dress and equip properly ten thousand soldiers and officers of the 58th army, which, as all forecasts and intelligence data showed, was waiting for ambulance war- There was no money.

For the repair of his own apartments, the minister found and threw billions of rubles, but for some reason, there was no money to buy GLONASS receivers for the warring army for two years of his ministry.

However, maybe the minister simply did not have time to rearm the army, while putting things in order at his workplace?

Let's see what order it is.

For example, earlier the maintenance of the General Staff building was carried out by the special commandant's office for the operation of the new administrative building. Three hundred officers, ensigns and contractors served in it. Officers - engineers were engaged in the operation of the technical systems of the building, ensigns - maintenance and repair, contractors - mostly women were engaged in cleaning the building and maintaining order in it. 15 million rubles were allocated per year for the functioning of this commandant's office.

At the next meeting with the minister, the work of this commandant's office was cited as an example of a vicious structure and an example of the unreasonable spending of money and the misuse of military posts. The commandant's office was abolished. Instead, as is now fashionable, a competition was held for a new building maintenance contractor. This contractor was the company "BiS".

Now, in the building of the General Staff, "BiS" is in charge of all housekeeping and cleaning. Its cleaners receive from 12 (the salary of a major in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation) to 24 thousand rubles (the salary of a colonel with full length of service), and the total cost of maintaining the building is now as much as 18 MILLION rubles a month! - 216 million a year! In total, after the ministerial "optimization", the cost of maintaining and maintaining the building increased fourteen times!

But now the minister can be proud - the rates of soldiers and officers are saved, this money goes "according to the profile" - into the pocket of merchants.

Needless to say, the BiS firm, which won the competition from competing firms, by a strange coincidence, turned out to be from St. Petersburg, where, as you know, the minister himself came out ...

Now Minister Serdyukov declares that there are a disproportionate number of officers in our army. Like, in the US Army (!!!) there are much fewer of them per one hundred soldiers. And according to the results of his "analysis" in the coming years, at least two hundred thousand (!!!) officers and ensigns will be sent under the ax of reductions. To restore, so to speak, "correct American proportions."

Using the example of the abolished commandant's office, one can easily calculate how much this reduction will cost the Armed Forces. And how many new BiSs will win competitions for the right to join the generous military budget ...
BEAR-VOIVODA

In general, the reformist enthusiasm of the new minister is more and more reminiscent of the well-known fable of Saltykov-Shchedrin about the bear-voivode, who ruined everything that was possible.

Then Serdyukov intends to equip the army with English sniper rifles, having decided after one of private conversations, instead of the existing SVD army sniper rifle and promising sniper systems, to purchase several thousand English L96 sniper rifles. And for whole months, departments and directorates of the General Staff are immersed in proof of the harmfulness and ill-conceivedness of such a decision. Only when, specifically for the minister, at the training ground, comparative firing of existing and promising Russian rifles and the English one offered by him was arranged, as a result of which no serious superiority of the "Englishwoman" over domestic samples was revealed - the minister on the topic of "Englishwoman", which cost 5 times (!!! ) more expensive than Russian counterparts, calmed down ...

By the way, one can easily imagine the fate of this “re-armament” if it happened in real life. The reaction of Great Britain to the war in South Ossetia was extremely negative and anti-Russian. It is clear that the contract would be broken and, in best case, the Russian army was left without the opportunity to purchase spare parts for these rifles, or even simply with underdelivery ...

Then the minister personally at the command post determines the targets for airstrikes in the combat area - having seen a bridge or a building on the map, he immediately calls an Air Force representative: “Let's bang this bridge!”

Then, tired of the extra load, he gets rid of the "nuclear suitcase" - the portable terminal "Cheget", the nuclear weapons control system, which was an obligatory attribute of his position, on which the country's security depends.

But these are still rather harmless outbreaks of reform activity. Much more tragic are his global "projects".

Now the minister again "activated" the well-known directive of February 21, 2008 on the replacement of the positions of officers and ensigns by civilian specialists.

Six months ago, after an almost unanimous protest by experts who proved the absurdity and ill-conceivedness of these plans, it was quickly withdrawn, but not canceled, but shelved. Then the experts proved that the implementation of this directive would lead to the fact that chaos and disorganization would inevitably arise in a combat situation, because. unbound by oath and obligation to put their lives at risk, civilian personnel can safely ignore any order that threatens life. In peacetime, this “dispersal” will lead to the collapse of the few remaining effectively functioning systems and the mass exodus of specialists from the army.

And now, after the military campaign in South Ossetia, this directive has again been brought into the light of God. Now these wholesale reductions are already under the flag of a general "optimization" of the size of the army. Military doctors have already announced plans to cut 66 hospitals by 2012. Medical officers are supposed to demobilize and start working as civilian specialists. It was announced that only 4,000 out of 14,000 military doctors would leave by 2012.

But military medicine today is one of the few effectively functioning systems of our army. During the last war (Chechnya), military doctors were able to achieve impressive results, when the death rate of the wounded taken to hospitals fell to less than 1 percent. In military medicine today, brilliant medical personnel are concentrated, high-class medical personnel are deployed and are functioning. medical institutions.

Otherwise than pogrom this "optimization" military medicine don't call!

the main problem in the fact that almost all decisions are made by Serdyukov behind the scenes, in the circle of advisers and associates. Without any broad discussion with specialists and experts. It is completely incomprehensible where such faith in the own infallibility of a “military expert” comes from for a person who worked from 1985 to 1993 in the Lenmebeltorg system with military experience as a corporal conscript?

Now Serdyukov has announced that the existing strength of the Armed Forces - 1 million 100 thousand people - is "too large", although three years ago former minister Defense Sergey Ivanov ardently convinced the Russians that the then reduction of the army by 100,000 people was the last, and that the size of the Russian Armed Forces was now (2005) brought "to the optimal composition" of 1.2 million people.

Since then, the army has been reduced by another 100 thousand people. And now a new large-scale reduction is coming - 100 thousand by 2016. At the same time, those around the minister do not hide the fact that it is not the last. Like, the “optimal” size of the Russian army should be no more than 800 thousand people.

Who and how determined this figure is unclear.

The most daring of the ministerial entourage vaguely say that, they say, the Russian budget simply cannot handle a larger number.

Of course, it won’t work if each company involved in cleaning and maintaining the buildings of the Ministry of Defense is paid 216 million rubles a year - a third of the annual salary of all military doctors in Russia, and spend 10 billion rubles on repairs of ministerial apartments.

But in all these reductions and discussions about what budget can fit what size of the army, one key question fell out of the attention of officials - in fact, who will this army fight against? Who is our likely adversary? With whom we may have to cross missile trajectories and aircraft contrails in the foreseeable future?

In my mind, this is where both military planning and military reform begin.

Because officials can adjust the size of the army and the military budget as much as they want to fit their ideas of a “balanced economy”, but if these volumes do not guarantee a confident parity in the future and do not provide for the needs of defense, then all these “optimizations” are nothing more than frank sabotage and crime.

Let me remind you that in 1998, when the sanctions against Yugoslavia were lifted, we proposed to the Milosevic government to purchase any weapons that Russia put on the foreign market. Then the ministers of finance and economy of the Yugoslav government, just like now our “Kudrinites”, wringing their hands, began to prove to Milosevic that the Yugoslav economy could not withstand the massive purchases of weapons from Russia. That Yugoslavia does not have extra money for the S-300 and other similar systems. That the military budget should be "balanced". As a result, the Serbs did not buy anything from us, maintaining the “balance” of their economy. And less than a year later, the NATO air armada left no stone unturned on the Serbian economy by literally "bombing" Serbia into the stone age - destroying even Yugoslavia's electricity grid and plunging it into darkness. Then everyone, suddenly, immediately remembered the Russian S-300, which, it turns out, is so necessary for Serbia, but which at the right time was not there ...

So who are we likely to face in the future?

With the mythical "international terrorists" of Bin Laden, who have been searching for seven years around the world by the American army, simultaneously occupying countries and subjugating entire regions?

Or maybe you should just take a closer look at what is happening on the borders of Russia? For example, to the fact that in the near future, with a high probability, a grouping will be deployed in the same Georgia US troops that NATO bases have come close to the Russian borders, that NATO fleets are already defiantly entering the area of ​​the Russian-Georgian conflict, and the US military transport aviation in a fire order is transferring military reinforcements to Saakashvili. And what will happen tomorrow - one can only guess, given that the Georgian leadership is absolutely not going to put up with the loss of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

I would like to hear from the “strategist” Serdyukov a clear assessment of the upcoming threats and how, after all these cuts, Russia will be able to protect its sovereignty and its national interests?

However, Mr. Serdyukov does not like to speak publicly on military issues. Either due to natural modesty, or because of their weak competence in these very matters. However, one more step military reform they started.

Next to the old building of the Ministry of Defense on Znamenka Street, a major overhaul of the mansion has begun for the residence of the Minister of Defense and his closest aides. The Ministry of Defense refused to name the amount that it will cost the Russian taxpayer ...

The law of the stool says that if you throw a stool into the air, don't expect it to fly like a bird, but you can be sure that sooner or later you will hit it on the head...

The Village found out what the events in Ukraine threaten Russia with, what the Russian Skynet looks like and how many “polite people” are in the Russian army
YURI BOLOTOV
Military expert Pavel Felgenhauer on the readiness of the Russian army and the threat of World War III — What's new at The Village


In the What's New column, The Village meets people who know better than anyone what changes are taking place in different areas of urban life: in education, medicine, criminal life, etiquette or human relations.
The Village learned from an independent military expert and columnist " Novaya Gazeta» Pavel Felgenhauer, what problems and difficulties the Russian armed forces face, why main threat the country is concentrated in Central Asia and why Russian politicians regularly threaten to destroy the United States.
On the modernization of the armed forces
“Last spring, we all saw “polite people” – it turned out that the Russian armed forces, from which you don’t expect anything good, can suddenly look modern and efficient. Is it really?
- Do not confuse weapons, equipment and discipline. Polite, following orders, soldiers may be armed with bows and clubs.
At the same time, forces armed with modern weapons can also be a horde. These are not directly related things.
Yes, there are well-trained units in Russia. A certain level of discipline in our armed forces has always been maintained - it cannot be said that they have ever turned into a crowd of marauding bandits (although this has also happened in history). At the same time, the armed forces as a whole remain backward and unprepared for modern warfare. A rearmament program until 2020 has been adopted, which means that the current armed forces are outdated. There were serious attempts to modernize them, but so far no great success has been achieved, which is shown fighting in the Donbass, where they are fighting the same way as 50 years ago.
This does not mean that it is impossible to fight like that - it is possible, especially if your opponent is exactly the same. But it is better not to encounter the modern armed forces of the West on the battlefield, otherwise there will be horns and legs.
- What is the percentage of modernized units in the Russian armed forces, how many “polite people” are there?
- "Polite people" - this is just special forces, which occupied the Simferopol airport. They are disciplined and quite well prepared. Yes, they were strikingly different from the Cossacks and robbers in various camouflage: earlier, during the Chechen wars, our special forces looked different, because people bought their own equipment and uniforms. In Crimea, everyone was dressed in the same type of "figure" (type of camouflage. - Approx. ed.), and therefore it was immediately clear who they were and where they came from. But the weapons and equipment of the soldiers still did not correspond to the modern level. They have the wrong weapons, the wrong armor, the wrong means of communication.
Nothing fundamentally has changed. We do not make modern small arms, we don’t make normal cartridges, they don’t make artillery shells for a long time - they shoot with old ones. There is no normal mass sniper rifle, and there are no snipers either. There are a handful of specialists in the FSB - they have foreign weapons and bullets. We managed to buy something abroad, but partially and in a very in large numbers.

We don’t make modern small arms, we don’t make normal cartridges, they don’t make artillery shells for a long time - they shoot with old ones

Our tanks are rubbish, everyone knows this, and therefore fundamentally new tanks are being created - the Armata platform. Soviet tank building has reached a dead end, it is difficult to admit this for many reasons, but everyone understood this very well. Our tanks are willingly bought only by those countries where there are no birth problems.
In the Donbass, our equipment is fighting on both sides and it burns like a candle.
Our aviation cannot effectively support infantry units - at least at night and in bad weather. We have problems with modern aircraft engines, a growing backlog. With aviation electronics problems, we never made a good modern radar. Radars are created in different countries, but components are produced in one place - in the USA. For example, there is a part for an active phased array antenna, it is made only by Raytheon Americans. We bought it, but it won't work anymore. And with its manufacture does not work.
Have you heard of GPS aiming? Artillery fire is controlled by a computer using the GPS coordinates of the target, which were tracked by the drone in the sky. I have seen this personally on the Lebanese border during the 2006 war, when an Israeli battery was hitting southern Lebanon. In this way, it is possible to conduct high-precision fire with ordinary cheap shells. But in Russia there is no such thing, and we do not know how to do it. Also, we can't use GPS, so we've pumped a lot of money into GLONASS. In general, the problems are serious.
Although we launched a screwdriver production of Forpost drones under an Israeli license, in fact this is a twenty-year-old IAI Searcher.
With their help, we can somehow coordinate the fire of multiple launch rocket systems. This made it possible to defeat the southern grouping of Ukrainian troops near Ilovaisk and Saur-Mohyla at the end of August 2014. But actually, these drones are in a million countries, and Georgia already had them during the 2008 war. That is, in fact, we have armed forces at the level of Pakistan. Of course they have nuclear weapon, missiles, submarines. True, how many of them are really suitable in the event of a nuclear war, no one really knows, but they will not specifically check.

All major upgrades in Russian history have relied on Western technology, access to which will now be difficult. It is not clear whether something can be seriously achieved. In the military sphere, prices are rising all the time, and now strong inflation will begin. For the same money, it will be possible to buy five times less than planned, and some things will not be able to be done at all. Every year, Russia made military purchases in the United States for one and a half to two billion dollars. These are not only components, but also high-precision machines. The whole world is switching to 3D printing of high-precision parts and complex profiles from powdered metals. And we still haven’t learned how to use digital processing machines, and Uncle Vasya is finishing everything with files. Well, where will the modern armed forces come from then? They are not modern either. It's more of an appearance.

Russia is generally a very provincial country, which is aloof from world progress, and especially in the armed forces. The Russian military has been isolated since tsarist times


There is a famous saying of Churchill: "Russia is not as strong as you fear, and not as weak as you hope." Things were not so bad with the armed forces before, things are not so good now.
- And who launched the modernization process in the Russian army - the disgraced Anatoly Serdyukov or Sergei Shoigu?
- Modernized the Armed Forces former boss General Staff Nikolay Makarov. Serdyukov did not get involved in all these matters, but he agreed to carry out reforms and gave Makarov the opportunity to act radically. After the arrival of Shoigu in 2012, a rollback began. There are no new reforms; partially dismantle what they have done. Under Shoigu, the situation became much worse than it was under Serdyukov.
Under Serdyukov, they took up the most important thing - military education. Military education in Russia is an absolutely nightmarish thing. And when you turn badly educated officers into badly educated generals, a big disaster happens. Russia in general is a very provincial country, which is aloof from world progress, and especially in the armed forces. The Russian military has been isolated since tsarist times. They frankly don't understand what it is. modern warfare. They know that there are new technical things, gadgets, but they missed all the revolutions in military affairs. They are still taught on the Second World War, it is still an example of everything.


“However, the Crimean events were called an example of a modern hybrid war.
“It’s a hoax, a scarecrow. There was no war in the Crimea, because no one offered armed resistance. Of course, there were certain logistical problems, but they were quite solvable, since the fleet was nearby. Operations to strengthen the protection of the fleet were prepared in advance, secretly they caught up with additional forces, although there were already marines there. When you do not resist, it's always easier.
- Is it possible now a large-scale clash in the spirit of 50 years ago?
- Of course available. Just usually when there's a collision modern army with the outdated, it looks like a confrontation between the Spaniards and the Indians. Or Zulus with spears against the British with machine guns. Large masses fail: during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein's gigantic army was completely useless. Yes, an outdated army can fight defensive battles in small groups, as Hezbollah did well during the Second Lebanese war. But sitting on the defensive is impossible to win. And when you, like in a shooting range, are hit with high-precision weapons and hit not in the area, but in the right place, you cannot attack. It gets demoralizing very quickly. It is impossible to endure, people just drop their equipment and run.
About threats
- In December, a new military doctrine of Russia was published. What can be judged from it?
- Military doctrine is a document of indirect action. When the liberal constitution was being written in 1993, they added a rule that Russia should have a military doctrine and that it should be open document. And since it is an open document, no one takes it seriously - the doctrine has always been treated with disdain. I once asked one of the chiefs of the General Staff how he used this doctrine. He replied that he did not use it in any way, because the paper was too hard.
Military doctrine is, in fact, a big press release, a reflection of some real things in a crooked mirror. But in real planning it is not used. There are documents of direct action - these are the Defense Plan and the Plan for the Use of the Armed Forces. Previously, they could not even be mentioned, now you can. But it is pointless to talk about them, because they have the highest degree of secrecy - OB.
Talking about plans according to military doctrine is like talking about Russia according to the constitution. We have a wonderful constitution, a lot of things are written in it.
So what?


Is a clash with NATO possible under the current conditions?
Yes, we are preparing for this, otherwise what is the rearmament program for? That kind of money was thrown at her. Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov openly said that our armed forces were preparing for a world war. It's almost inevitable.
- And at what time?
— I think by 2025. The rearmament program was launched with the expectation that after 2020 you need to be ready either for a world war or a series of major regional conflicts - the so-called resource wars.
Our policy is based on what will work Malthusian trap - Malthusian trap. There will be a terrible global crisis, a lack of resources, and therefore the role of Russia will increase, but along with it, risks will also increase. The whole world can attack us to take away natural resources in our large territory and in the Arctic. And we will try to somehow repel this attack from all sides.
The main enemy is, of course, the United States. To a lesser extent, China. A defense perimeter, which includes Ukraine, must be built. The loss of Ukraine is a breakthrough of the perimeter, we find ourselves absolutely defenseless in the face of a deadly threat. Therefore, Ukraine must be kept by any means.
The main problem that all the military now agrees with is that the events in Ukraine started at the wrong time, we did not have time to rearm. It would be better if it happened in 2018-2020.
How is NATO responding to this?
“Now they see us as a very obvious threat. A couple of weeks ago there was a meeting of defense ministers, and they adopted a program: they will prepare for war with Russia. All countries voted, including Hungary and Greece. There are serious concrete measures. The Baltics seem to NATO the most dangerous direction, so a European corps is being created rapid response with headquarters in Poland.

While the Europeans are ready to put up 30 thousand soldiers, and these units will be scattered over nation states, but the headquarters will be permanent. They will also create six additional headquarters along the eastern edge of NATO in order to coordinate incoming reinforcements with local forces. At the peak of the operation in Afghanistan, there were 140,000 soldiers; here, together with the Americans, there could be the same number.

Nobody canceled the Chinese threat,
but she looks amazing


It takes a month and a half to gather strength. We are talking about increasing combat readiness: the time was considered peaceful, combat readiness was low, now the opposite is true. War is a complex logistical and technological problem, and the armed forces are different from calling a taxi through the application. I ordered it and it arrived in five minutes - it doesn’t work with them like that. We are talking about days, days, weeks and months. Promotion of large masses of people requires great effort and preparation. bring the armed forces to high degree combat readiness is very expensive, and it is also impossible to keep it on it for a long time.
- If the Russian army and NATO units clash, will it be like the confrontation between the Indians and the Spaniards?
- Yes. In different countries different level weapons and training, but they are more or less trained to act together. This is the essence of NATO - to teach everyone the same command language, to standardize calibers and equipment. Certainly, European forces weaker than the American ones, but they can act together with them. In the event of a conflict in the Baltics, neutral Swedes and Finns will also join NATO.
Of course, the Americans outnumber our forces in a conventional sense. Without the use of nuclear weapons, there is no chance.
Is a conflict with China possible? Million Chinese soldiers on the border with the Amur - is it just a scarecrow?
“It doesn't look like the Chinese are preparing for this. All their main studies were made in case of a confrontation with the United States in the event of the capture of Taiwan. There is no point in fighting with us. In Soviet times, the Far East had a real defense system and a lot of troops, but now there are almost none there. Nobody canceled the Chinese threat, but it looks unlikely.


Is ISIS a threat to Russia?
— There is a potentially unstable situation in Central Asia, especially in Uzbekistan. It is not clear what will happen when President Islam Karimov, who has no heirs, dies. A poor, monstrously oppressed population, a significant part of which are Muslims. In Soviet times, Islam was suppressed quite nicely everywhere, but it remained in the Ferghana Valley. There is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) - Salafi militants, absolute hardcore. Their bases were located in Afghanistan, but in 2001 the Americans came and drove them to Waziristan, and all this time they were operating there. In the summer of 2014, there was an attack on the Karachi airport - this is just the IMU.
They are well-trained, hard-nosed Islamic militants who have been hit by American drones. The IMU even recognized the caliph of the Islamic State, and he appointed their leader as his emir for Central Asia. That is, the IMU is, in fact, a branch of ISIS. So far, however, ISIS is drawing people from all parts of the world into its conflict in the Middle East, but I don't think the IMU will join it. They will not deal with Afghanistan either, they will leave it to the Pashtuns, but they are ready to enter Uzbekistan if destabilization begins there. An Islamic revolution may take place in Uzbekistan, as in Egypt. But Uzbekistan differs from Egypt in that there is no Egyptian army there - it is a large and serious force. And the Uzbek army is not large and not serious. She will not be able to slam the Islamists.
Destabilization in Central Asia is the most real and significant of the threats. These are tens of millions of refugees, the loss of Baikonur and strategic facilities such as the Sary-Shagan test site and the Window facility on the Pyanj, the loss of which is irreparable. This is the end of manned astronautics. We will cease to be a space power. If Uzbekistan falls, and we are tied up in Ukraine, then we will have big problems with a war on two fronts.
- Recently, three people were detained in New York Russian spies. What does this say about work? Russian intelligence?
- Nothing unusual. This happens from time to time, but when there was a period of friendship with the West, both we and they solved such issues behind the scenes. Now all rubbish goes to the public.
About the new Cold War
What about Russian nuclear weapons? Last year, a new National Defense Control Center was opened on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow. Our politicians regularly threaten to wipe the US off the face of the earth. And at the same time, it has recently become known that the last satellite of the ballistic missile launch detection system has fallen.
- We seem to have nuclear forces, but no one will check how rusted they are. There were times when the missiles simply failed.

In the early warning system - a missile attack warning system - a lot of money has recently been invested in order to bring it to life. Changed all computer network: it could not be upgraded piece by piece, only re-created. The system was created in the 1970s on the basis of Soviet copies of IBM mainframes, fully entered into operation in the 1980s. Input was made on punched cards, and ten scenarios of nuclear war were prepared in advance. A really very old system - of course, this had to be changed, and therefore we launched our Skynet. Everything is secret; It is not known how long it took to prepare. Most likely, foreign components were used. Let's see how well all this will work - the replacement is fraught with failures and errors.


If Uzbekistan falls,
and we will be tied up in Ukraine, then we will have big problems with a war on two fronts

The fact that we no longer have a satellite flight means that the time to decide on an evacuation is reduced. The Americans have 45-50 minutes to decide on the evacuation of senior leadership. They board helicopters and then use the flying command post. We also have helicopters for evacuation, but in Moscow there are problems with air vents: fiber optics are strung everywhere between tall buildings. On Frunzenskaya Embankment, a platform was made on the water, where there are no wires interfering with the flight.
One replacement satellite should be launched in the summer. If it is lost, it will be very difficult to make a new one, because everything was created on foreign components. Recently, all serious satellites have been made on French platforms. 90% of components are foreign.


Military expert Pavel Felgenhauer on the readiness of the Russian army and the threat of World War III. Image #5.
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- Dmitry Rogozin said directly that the United States can destroy up to 90% of our nuclear potential in just a couple of hours. Is it so?
- The United States has not yet worked out Russia as an enemy, although now they are considering us in this capacity with great joy. It is beneficial for the US military and the military-industrial complex to have Russia instead of ISIS as an enemy. Why nuclear submarines against ISIS? Russia as an enemy is also much better than China: its nuclear triad is weaker than ours. The generals who now lead the US military began serving during the Cold War. They are familiar and understandable.
Threats of nuclear war are nothing new. It's a Cold War tactic, all of this has established terms that have simply been forgotten. This is brinkmanship - "balancing on the brink of war." The term was coined by John Foster Dulles, who was Secretary of State under Eisenhower in the 1950s. One side is threatening nuclear war, and since this is MAD (mutual assured destruction), the other side will give in to back away from the brink of conflict.
The master of this policy was Putin's great friend, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who very well, with the help of this balancing act, outflanked our people during the "Doomsday War" in the Middle East in 1973. He spent several days explaining Soviet leadership that his boss Richard Nixon is a crazy anti-communist, constantly drinking whiskey (which, in general, is true) and ready to press the nuclear button. It worked: we retreated and significantly lost our influence in the Middle East.

During the Cold War, this technique was actively used by the West, because in the conventional sense they were weaker than the Warsaw Pact, and in the nuclear sense they were superior. Now it's the other way around. In a conventional sense, Russia is much weaker, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Therefore, we are left with only nuclear deterrence. Nuclear weapons cannot be used, otherwise Russia will be nothing but ashes, and therefore we will threaten to use them, encouraging the West to make concessions and compromises in order to avoid the worst.


There will be no foreign peacekeepers in the Donbass, this has been clear for a long time, and the current Ukrainian regime will not let Russians in there


This is a time-tested tactic, just like proxy wars. What is now in Donbass is a proxy war, like Vietnam, Afghanistan and the Middle East conflict. The Cold War is back, and so are the tactics of the Cold War. Moreover, there are people who began their service in the 1970s and remember all this very well. Like Putin.
- And what will happen next in Ukraine?
- There will be an unstable truce, and then again an aggravation in the late spring or early summer. Now all parties need an operational pause. The winter campaign time ends, then the time will begin summer campaign. Russia's goal is clear - to regain control over Ukraine. Russia is interested not in Debaltseve, but in Kyiv. And until the goal is reached, the conflict will continue. Proxy wars can go on for decades. No one will allow Ukraine to be a Western ally so that American and German tanks and missiles stand near Poltava.
There will be no foreign peacekeepers in the Donbass, this has been clear for a long time, and the current Ukrainian regime will not let Russians in there. In addition, they are not fundamentally different from OSCE observers, they have a mandate only for self-defense, and even then they prefer to surrender, it’s more reliable: most likely, you will survive. Our peacekeepers fought in 2008, but in principle, peacekeepers do not fight, but patrol the demilitarized zone. They do not force peace, but only observe.
- How will the events in Ukraine affect the Russian conscription?
- The crisis of 2008 helped to solve the problem with the recruitment of the US armed forces, and our military is now expressing the hope that due to unemployment it will be easier to hire contract soldiers. People who are desperate because of the crisis will go to sign up for the war. So it will be or not - I do not know, especially since we have not yet created normal system recruiting and do not even fully understand what it is. Therefore, we have big problems with the contract and a lot of turnover. Therefore, yes, until Ukraine can do without conscripts, who are rewritten as contract soldiers retroactively. The duration of the service will not be increased now, although it is difficult to say what will happen by next autumn. Everything depends on the situation.
- In general, there will be no peace?
- Not yet. A peaceful resolution of the conflict is not yet in sight.

Not enough money, not enough soldiers, huge discipline problems, many accidents, dead and outdated equipment. Contrary to what Putin tells you, the Russian army is not that strong.

This week, the British Daily Mail published an article titled "Is Putin plotting a war in Europe?" in which intelligence sources, drawing on large-scale military exercises in Russia, claimed that the Russian army is preparing to fight NATO. All this is happening against the backdrop of many reports of the resumption of the Cold War, of Russian reconnaissance aircraft flying near the air borders of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, of submarines collecting intelligence around the world and, of course, of the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine and other countries. . Add to that the weekly reports of the might of the Russian military, how scary Putin is, and that the Russian military is returning to Cold War glory.

But let's tell the truth. Intimidation is used as a magic tool to get budgets and increase sales. The Russian army is actually very different from the picture that is being painted for us. They are separated from the combat capability of the army of the USA, China, Germany and France light years. Of course, one should not go to the other extreme, this is still not South Sudan and not Somalia. The Russian army has a huge number of nuclear weapons, excellent aircraft, excellent tanks and silent submarines. But, as you will now learn, it is still not as formidable as it seems.

So what is really going on in the Russian army?

1. Many victims and bad discipline

In May, it became known that Vladimir Putin had signed a presidential decree according to which data on the losses of the army during military operations in peacetime became a “state secret”. In an effort to restore Russia's superpower status, Putin sends soldiers to places like Georgia, Ukraine and beyond, and they show impressive abilities there, but they also die in large numbers. For example, Ukrainian sources report that the Russians burn the bodies of soldiers who died in Ukraine to hide their participation in the war, and also to avoid the negative impact of losses on the morale of the troops.

To this should be added the huge number of soldiers dying in the exercises. According to some reports, there are several hundred such cases a year. If this is not enough, then several hundred more soldiers die every year at the hands of their comrades in fights or as a result of alcohol abuse. The last official data on such cases was published in 2001, and then it was about 500 victims of murders in the army.

There are many reasons for this, and the low level of discipline in Russian troops, which affects their combat capability and even the quality of the exercises. The old-timers mock the recruits, the ceremonies on the occasion of the completion of the training courses are more like the torture of the Inquisition, and this is only a small part that is known to the public. Two years ago, as part of a nationwide fight against smoking, it was decided to stop distributing free cigarettes to soldiers, but the chief of the general staff warned that a riot could result. The situation with discipline and with the value of human life is so bad that the mothers of soldiers come out to protest demonstrations.

2. There is no money in the treasury

Although the Russian military budget has been greatly increased, it is nowhere near the defense spending of the wealthy US, and the financial situation of the Russian armed forces is poor. The Russian military budget is 80-90 billion dollars, the American - 500 billion dollars, the Chinese - more than 100 billion dollars. German - 50-60 billion dollars.

The difficult economic situation makes it difficult to acquire new weapons. Most of the military equipment of the Russian army refers more to museum exhibits than to military weapons. Submarines rust in ports, planes fall apart at airfields, many projects remain on paper. Vladimir Putin has good intentions and grandiose plans, but most of them are not carried out. The Russian stealth aircraft is still being tested, while the US has already formed five squadrons of Raptors and has moved on to building the next generation aircraft.

3. Soldiers are missing

For many years now, Russia has been discussing the possibility of switching to a fully mercenary army, as in the United States. On the this moment the country has universal conscription, and the term of service is from one to two years, unless the conscript has money or connections. The army has units fully staffed by contract soldiers. In particular, one of the previous chiefs of the General Staff said that two brigades, 12 special forces units and five airborne battalions and the marines. But the problem is that, for the reasons described above, the Russian army has great difficulty in attracting contract soldiers, especially from quality sectors of the population.

4. Planes fall from the sky

In the past two years, we have seen a resurgence of actions known since the Cold War: air reconnaissance flights along air borders Western countries and next to their ships. However, it should be noted that the condition of the Russian Air Force is so bad that planes often just crash and crash. The last incident was last week, the plane crashed during the air parade.

In July, the Russians lost a Su-24 aircraft and a Tu-95 strategic bomber, a month earlier, two MiG-29s and a more modern Su-34. Entire air fleets were chained to the ground due to plane crashes and pilot deaths. The list could go on, but the overall picture is clear. The maintenance of the planes is poor, as there is not enough money, and the pilots cannot train properly. New planes do not arrive for the same reason - lack of money.

Although Russia has excellent aircraft, most of the aviation is made up of the already obsolete MiG-29 and Su-27, which have not undergone such modernization as their parallel F-15 and F-16 models.

5. The only aircraft carrier that isn't overly impressive

The US Navy currently has 11 strike aircraft carriers and eight more helicopter carriers, no less advanced. France, Italy and even India have such ships. The Russian fleet has one aircraft carrier, not in best condition, which, moreover, needs to be refueled every month or two, unlike American nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.

Due to the size of an aircraft carrier, only light aircraft, that is, with limited freedom of action in the air, can take off from it.

Vladimir Putin plans to build dozens of ships and submarines, but the depreciation of the ruble is forcing these plans to be curtailed. Fixed time, 2020, looks unrealistic too.

6. Tank vs Tank

One of Putin's main assets is a powerful armored force with thousands of tanks. But here, too, a careful study of the quantity and quality of tanks paints a different picture than the Russian leader does. The Russian army has at least 10,000 tanks, and 3,000 of them are in active service. About half of them are T-72s, outdated vehicles that do not meet Western standards. There are also new tank, T-90, but there are only 300 of them in the troops, and the speed of deliveries is slow. The United States has fewer tanks, about 5 thousand, but they are all different modifications of the M-1 Abrams. If you add the Marine Corps, then this number will increase by several hundred.

7. Accidents at parades show everything

The Russian army loves to show its power to the citizens of the country and the whole world at military parades. They usually involve dozens of aircraft, hundreds of pieces of equipment and many soldiers. If we carefully examine these parades, we will see the same thing that was described above - accidents and disasters, the death of a soldier, a plane crash, a tank explosion. As we have already said, just this week a plane crashed at the parade and the pilot died. Last month, in front of the public, there was an accident when launching missiles from a ship. Fortunately, the rockets fell into the water. During the parade of the air defense forces, which are considered very strong, the rocket fired did not hit the target and fell due to a technical malfunction. During the Victory Day parade on May 9, the Russians presented their newest tank, which simply stalled and had to be towed.

In November, the son left to serve in the Russian Army. In June he graduated from the university and received a diploma. What is the problem?

The problem began about six months before the time of the call. The adult guy categorically did not want to go to Amiya, because. afraid of terrible force. What were you afraid of?
He was afraid that he would be beaten by old-timers and re-enlisted sergeants. And even more, the son was afraid that they would mock him. After all, legends circulate throughout the country about how young soldiers are beaten. How they are "smeared". How they are driven to disability and suicide. You don't have to go far for examples, right? Starting with the official recognition of M. Norbekov in one of his books. And, concluding with a recent publication on the Internet about a criminal case in Kronstadt.
And the main problem, after all, is not this.

The main problem is elsewhere. As a doctor of higher education pedagogy (I work with people over 16 years old), I assume that there are such “sons” in the whole country. As a specialist, I understand that throughout Mother Russia, able-bodied and physically healthy guys are afraid to join the Army. For the same reason. I understand that they begin to be afraid about 4-6 months before the call. And these 4-6 months, almost every Russian guy lives with a sense of fear. Of course, guys are embarrassed to admit it. But, if we talk to them ... we will see a depressing picture.
The problem is aggravated by the fact that, for another 6 months, being inside the Army itself, most of them live in a state of fear.

And the problem is not only in their personal experiences. And not only that young soldiers are really humiliated and beaten. After all, for sure, far from everyone is humiliated and beaten, right?

THE PROBLEM IN THE FATE OF THE COUNTRY AND IN THE FATE OF THE NATION. The problem is that ALMOST HALF (!!!) of the rank and file of our defenders of the Fatherland live in a state of fear of humiliation and beating.

Question 1: What is the moral and psychological spirit and combat potential of the army, in which almost half of the soldiers live in fear???
Question 2: Can we be proud of the Army, in which almost half of the soldiers are afraid of their fellow veterans, afraid of sergeants, afraid of pain?
Question 3: Is such an army capable of defeating a real enemy whose soldiers live without fear (i.e., self-confident and have high self-esteem)??? Are we securely protected by our Army?

I don’t even ask what kind of innovative potential do the citizens of Russia have, who have been threatened with humiliation and beatings for six months? And which genetic code are passed on to their children by men who have lived in a state of fear for almost a year?