Back In Martial Business

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, there was an economic collapse along with pride relinquished to the practical realization that Russia no longer would be able to monopolize the natural resources of the adjacent countries it had absorbed into the concept of its ideal; that of subjecting its neighbours to the reality of occupation under the guise of co-operative communality. Its military, once 4.5-million strong, as the Soviet armed forces, now stands at 1.2-million, representing the Russian armed forces.

Russia's Defence Minister, Anatoli Serdyukov has informed the country's President Dimitry Medvedev that 10% of the country's weaponry is outdated to the point of obsolescence. Easily solved: although Russia's oil wealth collapsed into near insignificance thanks to the sinking of the value of petroleum-based assets over the past year - complicated by the financial global collapse - funding can and will still be found for a massive updating of the Russian military arsenal. Underway is the mass production of warships and submarines, and a modernization of its nuclear arsenal.

The professional military of whom the Soviet Union was once so proud has become a Russian military of uneducated conscripts, top-heavy with its old, entitled and experienced officer class; the recruits are the expendable rabble. Burdened with too many officers, the ranks are ill-trained and morale is dismal. Recruitment efforts to bring aboard military personnel with better education, offering higher salaries and shorter-term contracts have been singularly unsuccessful. Little wonder, given the prevailing bullying culture in the services.

Last year 471 servicemen lost their lives in incidents unrelated to combat. Some 24 of those deaths were attributed to brutal hazing incidents. Two hundred, thirty-one military conscripts chose to end their lives through taking them. And twenty-six personnel were murdered. Not a very impressive landscape for recruitment. Potential conscripts know the stories; of forced work on private country homes of the military elite, and soldiers hired out by their officers as a source of cheap labour.

A human rights group calling themselves The Soldiers' Mothers claim in addition that conscripts have been forced to work as male prostitutes, availing older servicemen. In one instance documents reveal that a young serviceman was sold for $2,500 by his commanding officer and sent to Siberia to work there on a building site. This is not merely demoralizing, it's viciously criminal, institutionalized malfunction. If the country is serious about turning itself around, it will have to make some pretty hard decisions.

"The aim of this modernization is to Westernize the Russian army. Things are so bad that something has to be done because the old Soviet military system is just crumbling", said Russia's leading defence analyst. But he's talking equipment. Something that can be bought, can be manufactured and attained. The greater component of dysfunction is not materiel, but the malaise that has afflicted its human dimension.