Russia Confirms Plan to Streamline Military

With Russian President Vladimir V. Putin determined to reform his nation’s military, Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev on Friday confirmed plans to sharply reduce the number of armed forces personnel over the next 2 1/2 years.

Military forces will be reduced by about 350,000 people from their estimated strength of 1.2 million.

“Decisions to do so have been made, and proposals to the president on their implementation are being worked out,” Sergeyev said, answering reporters’ questions during a visit to the Kantermirovskaya tank division outside Moscow.

The planned cuts are a recognition that the nation cannot afford its current armed forces and come as military losses in Chechnya and the humiliating sinking last month of a navy nuclear submarine are fresh in minds of the Russian public.

Putin bluntly spelled out his dissatisfaction with the armed forces last month. He called for setting defense spending at realistic levels, based on Russia’s economic circumstances and on an accurate assessment of the threats facing the nation.

He reasserted the need for change after the loss of the nuclear submarine Kursk during naval exercises in the Barents Sea. The navy reluctantly sought foreign help in its unsuccessful effort to rescue the crew.

Putin said Russia’s military had to be compact, modern and well paid.

The Kursk disaster led to pressure for a boost in military spending, with the defense committee in the lower house of parliament pushing to increase the 2001 allocation by $2 billion, to $9 billion.

Russia’s defense spending this year--$4.5 billion--is a small fraction of $268 billion spent by the United States.

The size of Russia’s armed forces has declined from at least 4 million people a decade ago. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the military has faced hard times; equipment has fallen into disrepair; and soldiers at times have had little to eat.

Although Putin has strongly identified himself with Russia’s renewed war in the separatist republic of Chechnya, the conflict against a few thousand rebels has dragged on for more than 11 months, exposing the weaknesses of the military.

Putin’s predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, vowed to abolish conscription and move to a fully professional army but failed to deliver. During its 1994-96 war in Chechnya, the military relied heavily on conscripts as cannon fodder--as it does again in the current conflict.

The military will need more funding, at least in the short term, if it is to tackle ambitious reforms. Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov went some way toward acknowledging this Friday when he vowed that, in 2001, the military will receive its full budget allocation for the first time in several years.

The main priorities are modernizing existing weapons and funding research and development, Kasyanov said on the RTR television network.

Russian news services quoted military sources as saying the ranks of the armed forces will be reduced by about 180,000 ground soldiers, 50,000 sailors and 40,000 airmen. The Interior Ministry will lose 20,000 personnel, while other forces will lose 60,000.

Some analysts argue that the main threat Russia faces, radical Islamic movements on its southern flank in Chechnya and Central Asia, can be met with a more compact and mobile army. But others argue that the planned cuts go too far.

“Of course a 900,000-strong armed forces is not quite sufficient for such a vast country as Russia,” said Alexander I. Zhilin, military analyst with the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti. “But pragmatically there was no choice.

“It is clear that the military budget cannot be significantly boosted,” he said, “so the only other option to try and keep the army in some semblance of combat readiness was to reduce its ranks.”