Putin Order Cuts Military by 600,000

Russian President Vladimir V. Putin signed a hard-nosed decree Thursday designed to shrink the country’s bloated and decrepit armed forces to an affordable and effective size.

“It has taken us a long time to arrive at this decision, and our time has run out,” Putin said. “Today we must act. The future of the army, and the military organization of the country as a whole, depends on it.”

The scale of the personnel cuts is nearly twice as large as had been expected--600,000 jobs instead of the 350,000 announced earlier.

Moreover, the reductions appear structured to avoid the kind of bureaucratic trickery that analysts say undermined previous cuts, such as designating military jobs as civilian ones. The new plan cuts both military and civilian positions: about 470,000 of the former and 130,000 of the latter.

“It is extravagant and wrong in any sense to maintain a cumbersome military organization, one that more often than not is inefficient,” Putin said. “In our situation, it is absolutely unacceptable.”

The new plan also includes cuts in armed forces other than the army, such as Interior Ministry troops, border guards and other auxiliary forces. And it includes financial incentives for the military, such as measures ensuring that the money saved from cuts will remain in the military budget and can be used to upgrade weaponry.

“The army never saw the money saved as a result of the previous cuts,” said military analyst Alexander I. Zhilin. “What Putin wants this time is a desperate measure to keep up what remains of the formerly formidable combat readiness of the country’s armed forces.”

At the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991, the country had about 4 million people in uniform, about 2.8 million of whom became part of the Russian army.

That number has since dwindled, but the Russian army still remains one of the world’s largest. The Defense Ministry has an estimated 1.2 million active-duty troops, and the Interior Ministry and other auxiliary forces account for 900,000 more--a total of 2.1 million troops in uniform. In addition, according to Russian news services, there are nearly 1 million civilian personnel associated with the armed forces, bringing the total number of military personnel to more than 3 million.

A force that size is far beyond Russia’s financial resources: This year, defense spending in Russia was only $4.5 billion, a small fraction of the $268 billion spent by the United States.

Putin’s decree follows years of halting efforts to reform Russia’s military. Former President Boris N. Yeltsin long pledged to abolish conscription and turn the army into a smaller, more flexible fighting force. But his reform efforts tended to peter out--something Putin’s new team pledges will not happen this time.

“We need a mobile, well-equipped military force, and that is why a decision on the reform enjoyed today unanimous support of the Security Council,” said Sergei Ivanov, chairman of the powerful Security Council that drew up the reform plan. Russia, he said, can no longer afford “3 million people wearing shoulder straps.”

Ivanov stressed that the cuts will not be made in combat personnel but will focus on support staff and command administration.

Recent events such as the Kursk submarine disaster and the war in separatist Chechnya have painfully demonstrated how badly Russia needs military reform. The navy did not have the rescue equipment needed to assist the hobbled nuclear submarine, for instance. And some officers have said the military had difficulty finding enough combat-ready units to fight in Chechnya and participate in other Russian military actions, including the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian province of Kosovo.

“There are millions of people who wear uniforms and receive salaries, but when it came to actual fighting, Russia couldn’t field more than 100,000 troops in Chechnya,” said military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer. “And those were supposed to be the troops who can fight!”

The personnel cuts are part of a series of measures aimed at reforming the military. Related moves include:

* Merging the country’s two main arms exporters, Rosvooruzheniye and Promexport, to eliminate competition. The new, combined arms-export company, Rosoboronexport, will answer to the Defense Ministry, which will be able to exert more control over arms sales and presumably share in the profits.

* Approving Ivanov’s decision to relinquish his active service status as a general in the Foreign Intelligence Service. The Security Council chairman said it was awkward for him to be making decisions for the armed services as a whole while still serving in one of its branches. The move is probably designed to be a model for other high-ranking officers serving in civilian jobs; news reports said the reform plan will eliminate 380 generals from active duty.

* Sergei L. Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.