So instead, what they thought was Russia faces a future in which it's more likely to be involved in smaller, scrappier border conflicts and power-projection missions, so it needed a smaller military but one that was more flexible, more efficient, and generally more modern. Despite the propaganda that still spread, NATO was not about to drive eastward, and if, God forbid, the Chinese ever invaded, well, frankly, the only response to that that would make any sense would be nuclear. The point is what, at that time, the Russian leadership realized was actually Russia was not going to face that kind of massive, existential big war. So it was really a structure to ensure that if need be, they could mobilize reservists, so you had large numbers of conscripts who then would be ready, and was all about really quality rather than quantity. ![]() The thing is, the Soviet military had really been based around the trauma of the Second World War and this idea that the motherland might need to be defended by some sort of massive, million-man army. In the reforms that came out of that, the "New Look" army, what were Russia's leaders seeking to change about the how the military looked and functioned?Įssentially, it was to try and drag the military out of its Soviet era. Things like that, which actually, put together, led to a litany of complaints.Ī Russian soldier in the South Ossetian town of Dzhava in August 2008. In fact, this is actually a war of blunders in terms of air bases which had long since been mothballed being attacked, of friendly fire incidents, of one case, for example, in which a general actually could not get in touch with his own forces through his communications network and had to borrow a journalist's satellite phone in order just to talk to his own troops. But there was an expectation that it was going to win a lot more neatly and effectively than it really did. The disproportion between Russia and Georgia in terms of their forces and size was just so huge, so, of course, Russia was going to win. The question of fighting Georgia was never really in doubt. How did the Russian military underperform in that conflict in Georgia? Over the next eight years, Russia waged two wars, a protracted one in Chechnya and then a shorter one in Georgia, and you write that the Russian military's underwhelming performance in Georgia in 2008 enabled Putin's defense minister to push through some serious reforms. REUTERS/Presidential Press Service/Itar-Tass Putin tours the submarine Arkhangelsk in port at Severomorsk in February 2004. Petersburg, so he had some dealings with the military garrison then, but really they were business dealings more than anything else. His career outside, when he left the KGB, it was really as a kind of political fixer in St. He did the bare-minimum reserve-officer training when he was at university, and then as soon as he left and joined the KGB, he used that to get himself out of any future reserve-officer responsibilities. He can scarcely walk past a tank or jet fighter without a photo opportunity in the cockpit, but he has no meaningful military experience. ![]() We have to note, after all, that this is a man who likes to pose as the tough-guy action figure. Putin himself, he was trained in and rose through the Soviet intelligence apparatus, so what was his relationship with the Russian military when he came to power, and what kind of role did he envision for it? Then-Prime Minister Putin speaks with then-FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev as then-Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev reviews documents before a meeting in Moscow in September 1999. ![]() Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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