The Russian military’s manpower problem

The greatest failures of Russian military reform over the last two years have been in the realm of manpower and staffing. Policy in this area has been wildly inconsistent and has shown no sign of either prior planning or strategic thinking during the reform process. I’ll focus here on just one aspect — the continuing [...]

Read Full Post »

Why is the Russian defense industry in such bad shape?

In recent weeks, I have been writing about how the Russian defense industry has shown itself to be incapable of providing the military with high quality weapons, platforms and systems, despite the relatively abundance of financing for military procurement over the last few years. But why hasn’t the money been spent on modernizing plants and [...]

Read Full Post »

Update on Shamanov

It seems that the saga of General Shamanov I wrote about in my last post has reached a quick and relatively quiet end. After a brief investigation, the defense minister announced that Shamanov had received a warning for conduct incompatible with his position (nepolnoe sluzhebnoe sootvetstvie).  Shamanov announced that he accepted the punishment. What this [...]

Read Full Post »

The Hunt for General Shamanov

The Russian press was consumed last week with the case of General Vladimir Shamanov, the commander of Russia’s airborne troops. According to reports first published in Novaia Gazeta, Shamanov ordered special forces based near Moscow to stop a prosecutor from carrying out a search of a factory owned by his son-in-law, who is wanted for [...]

Read Full Post »