Russian troops suffer from a shortage of modern weapons, an unclear military doctrine, a lack of meaningful allies, and an alarming personnel exhaustion. This is stated in a report entitled "The New Russian Army", which was presented in Moscow by the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.
According to the figures at the disposal of the US State Department, the number of Russian troops, which once reached 4 million in the best years of the Cold War, has now dropped to 1.1 million. In addition, according to the report, the size of a fully operational force is equal to only two American brigades. those. is something about 8-10 thousand people. The United States, on the other hand, has about 100,000 troops in Afghanistan alone.
Changes in the composition of the military force in Russia are largely due to the new Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, reports "InoSMI". He is a former furniture dealer, and apart from one year serving in the Soviet army, he had little or no ties to the military before assuming this most responsible leadership position in 2007. His plan to cut costs and eliminate unnecessary casualties has met with controversy in Russia and overshadows US Defense Secretary Robert Gates' plans to cut the defense budget by $ 78 billion over five years.
The New York Times reported at the end of 2010 that, among other things, Serdyukov called for a reduction in the number of officers in the Russian army by about 200,000 (including 200 generals), a reduction in central command personnel by 60%, and a reduction in the number of military personnel by 130,000. person in five years. And just before the New Year, he caused unrest in Russia when he suggested that the military get rid of his famous Kalashnikov assault rifle and start purchasing more effective foreign-made weapons.
Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer studied the center's report and concluded that Russia is now suffering from poorly trained, poorly motivated troops, where more and more people with a criminal record are entering, and recruiting has become a huge burden. “The Defense Ministry is now calling on 18-year-olds born in the early 1990s, when the male fertility rate in Russia fell from 1.5 million in the mid-1980s to less than 800,000,” Felgenhauer writes. “The recruitment of criminals into the ranks of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs provoked hazing in the barracks and reduced the level of combat readiness.”
In addition to manpower problems, the Russian military industry, which until recently ranked second in the world, behind only the United States, is experiencing a series of disappointing setbacks. Algeria recently returned newly delivered Russian fighters due to numerous defects. And at the end of last year, Russia decided to purchase French Mistral-class helicopter carriers for the Russian fleet.
Fox News military analyst, retired Lieutenant General Robert Scales, put it bluntly: "Russia simply no longer has armed forces as such."
This is good news for some, according to Skales, but it is also growing "the likelihood that Russian pride will conflict with its capabilities and increase the chances of miscalculation, in particular given Russia's dependence on nuclear weapons as a substitute for conventional weapons."
