Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov makes a third attempt to survive from Moscow The main headquarters of the Navy. All the officers of the headquarters were ordered to pack their bags; by the decision of Anatoly Serdyukov, in the summer the naval commanders, together with their families, would have to move from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The order to move the headquarters has already been signed. Thus, an end was put in a long discussion about the advisability of such a move. Although in reality the scandal is most likely only gaining momentum.
Let's move on to the history of the issue, it is so confused that the thought involuntarily suggests itself that there are some interests hidden from the public, which are much more important than publicly voiced arguments. Many different facts point to the fact that the relocation of the naval headquarters from the capital to St. The very initiative to move came from people who are very far from both the fleet and the army.
The very first on this topic, back in 2007, was the Governor of St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko. “We have been nurturing this idea for a long time. St. Petersburg is a recognized sea capital, we have an admiralty, a naval museum, a maritime register, institutions that train personnel for the Navy, and a shipbuilding industry. " But let us leave the frivolity of these judgments and try to answer the question of who are these "we, who were carrying them." One of them is State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov. It was he who, a few days after Matvienko's statement, went out with a corresponding request to Anatoly Serdyukov. The latter accepted this proposal favorably. As well as a number of previous ones, which made it possible to free expensive Moscow real estate from various military facilities.
Here, the chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov joined in, whose disagreements with the Minister of Defense were never reported. However, he, a graduate of the Academy of the General Staff, needed to find at least some intelligible military-strategic justification for such a move of a subordinate command body, to which 20% of Russia's nuclear potential is subordinated. The governing body, which occupies not only a complex of buildings in Moscow, but also has many facilities throughout the region. For example, such as a reserve command post of the Navy, buried under the ground on 6 floors, which in the Soviet, relatively prosperous years was built for almost 15 years, or such as a number of powerful communication centers, from which nuclear submarines located in any area of the world ocean, commands are transmitted.
However, Nikolai Makarov limited himself only to judgments about the "historical justice" of the move. Recalling that before the revolution, the command of the fleet was located in St. Petersburg, so let him return there. Makarov chose to forget about the fact that before the revolution the General Staff was in the same city. After these statements, everything started to turn. An announcement was made about the relocation of the General Staff of the Navy from outside the Garden Ring by the second quarter of 2009. A plaque even appeared on the Admiralty building in St. Petersburg - "Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy" …In April of the same year, the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Vladimir Vysotsky, vaguely remarked that, in fact, the move from Moscow to St. Petersburg had not yet been agreed upon, there were only oral orders on this matter.
What could have stopped this process for a long time, which was approved by the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff? No one can explain this, only protests from the naval community come to mind. So in January 2009, a letter was sent to the country's leadership, 63 prominent admirals and senior naval officers, of course already in reserve, signed it, others are prohibited from protesting. Among those who signed the letter were: Admiral Viktor Kravchenko - former Chief of the Main Staff of the Navy, Admiral of the Soviet Union Fleet Vladimir Chernavin - former Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, Admiral Igor Kasatonov - former First Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Admiral Vyacheslav Popov - former Commander of the Northern Fleet, and now a member Federation Council.
Admiralty, St. Petersburg
Their reasoning against relocation was summarized as follows:
- This decision of the Ministry of Defense is of a voluntaristic nature and has not been calculated economically. The approximate, only estimated, costs of such a move are in the range of 40-50 billion rubles, while the design, creation and deployment of the entire secure fleet management system is estimated at over 1 trillion rubles. rub. At the same time, the construction of one corvette of the Steregushchy project for the fleet is estimated at 2 billion rubles.
- Relocation of the main command of the fleet will lead to the inevitable long-term loss of the stability of the functioning of the entire fleet management system. The interaction and interconnection of various constituent subsystems in a unified command and control system will be disrupted, including strategic nuclear forces as part of the fleet, the command post of the Navy and command posts of all fleets, communication centers and centers, various command and control bodies among themselves, as well as bodies of the Ministry of Defense and General Staff.
- All nuclear powers have naval headquarters located in capitals, which at the time of a crisis is necessary to make the most important decisions as soon as possible.
- The already difficult situation with ensuring the combat stability of the main command of the Navy will be aggravated by the fact that in the St. Petersburg area, in the opinion of specialists, there are unfavorable features of ground layings, which creates difficulties with the creation of highly protected command posts of communication and control systems.
At the same time, conventional calculations show that the flight time for NATO aviation to deliver missile and bomb strikes against the facilities of the Main Headquarters of the Navy in St. Petersburg will be 30 minutes. At the same time, our "northern capital" is not covered by such a powerful air defense shield that has been created around Moscow.
- The move will deal a strong blow to the personnel of the Main Command, which is staffed with the most highly qualified and experienced personnel with extensive experience in serving and managing the forces of the fleet. Many of them may refuse to move to St. Petersburg, since they have not so many years left to serve, and many of them will no longer want to establish their life in a new place. According to preliminary estimates, out of almost 800 employees of the main command, only 20 people want to move to St. Petersburg.
- Since the Naval Engineering Institute is currently located in the Admiralty building, into which the high command of the fleet is going to move, it will need to be moved from there. However, this institution, which trains mechanics for the nuclear submarine, has a unique educational and technical base. Here, among the objects, there are operating models of nuclear reactors, submarine compartments with all weapons and equipment, diving installations, damage control chambers. All this will have to be transferred to a new location. According to experts, this will take at least 10 years, which will be spent on complex construction and installation and commissioning works. Naturally, for the time of this transfer at the institute, the training of specialists for our fleet will be deteriorated.
The conclusion of those who signed the letter of the 63s is quite unambiguous: “There is no need to move the main command from Moscow, except for the implementation of the ambitious fantasies of our officials. The redeployment will require huge expenditures of financial resources, which would be better spent on the construction of housing for officers and the purchase of new ships for the fleet, which only a few units have left the domestic stocks in recent years, and that are mainly made for foreign customers."
In conclusion, we can cite the opinion of the former first deputy commander-in-chief of the Navy, Admiral Ivan Kapitanets, who stressed that there is no rational explanation for this move. "For the Russian fleet, this could end with a second Tsushima."
I would like to believe that the past 2 years in the leadership of the Ministry of Defense and the leadership of the country pondered over the arguments of the retired admirals. However, since the decision to move was nevertheless made, and no intelligible explanations were given to the public, we have to conclude that the top just wanted to spit on any objections when it comes to the capital's real estate, which is estimated in numbers with many zeros. Even when it comes to the defense capability of Russia.
