The rationale for this change was to increase the army’s flexibility in creating more deployable units, simplifying the chain of command and enabling better coordination between the different arms of service during operations. In this sense, Russia followed a pattern of reform that had been pursued by many Western states, such as the United States and United Kingdom, which had adopted the brigade as the basic building block of its armed forces already during the 1990s (Renz and Thornton 2012: 47). As a part of this process, understaffed mobilization ‘ghost’ units were disbanded to leave room for a smaller number of units with permanent readiness. These structural changes were pushed through by December 2009. The process included significant cuts in the number of officers by about a third to around 220,000 by 2012. The rank of warrant officer was abolished completely. The reductions were achieved, in part, by slashing vacant positions, not replacing officers reaching retirement age and offering retraining opportunities to officers wishing to pursue a civilian career (Renz 2010: 58–9; Thornton 2013; Klein and Pester 2014).
The aim of increasing the number of professional servicemen was more difficult to achieve, because it required more than structural adjustments. However, advances in this area have also been made, because it was recognized that social aspects and improvements to the image of military service as a profession were essential if the process of modernization was to succeed. As Putin wrote in an article about the need for and achievements of military reforms in 2012, ‘our aims in the sphere of defence and national security cannot be achieved unless… servicemen… are highly motivated – and unless, let me add, the Russian public shows respect for the Armed Forces and military service’ (Putin 2012b). Competitive salaries, better service conditions and welfare provisions, including housing and pensions, improved the image of military service and left servicemen with a new sense of purpose and pride in their profession (Giles 2016: 16–17). Military service again became an attractive career option, particularly so in poorer Russian provinces and following the worsening economic situation from 2014 onwards. Measures were also taken to increase the appeal of conscription and to tackle the problem of dedovshchina. The term of conscript service was decreased from two years to twelve months. This was accompanied by a so-called programme of ‘humanizing’ service conditions for conscripts, including the introduction of regular periods of rest, improved nutrition, permission to leave the military unit over the weekend, and allowing personal calls from mobile phones when off-duty. As a result, draft dodging now is no longer a serious problem. Although Russia is still remote from the move to a fully professional military, the number of professional service personnel in the Russian armed forces increased from about 174,000 in 2011 to more than 300,000 in 2015 (Lavrov 2015).
Steps have been taken to make up for the dearth of new equipment procured by the armed forces throughout the Yeltsin era. The extremely ambitious plans for the updating of such equipment announced at the outset of the 2008 modernization programme were not achieved in their entirety for the reasons discussed further below. However, new equipment delivered as part of the state armaments programme to 2020 has undoubtedly made the Russian military more modern and more capable. Advances were made particularly in the realm of upgrading the strategic rocket forces, the country’s air defence system and sizeable deliveries of new fixed-wing and rotary aircraft to the air force (Cooper 2016: 52). During the Crimea operation in March 2014, observers also noted the use by Russian troops of materiel that previously seemed unavailable, such as new ‘webbing’ and personal radios (Marcus 2014). In Syria, Russia demonstrated that its modernized military now had the sea and airlift capabilities required for limited out-of-area operations. This air campaign would have been beyond the realm of possibilities before the advances of the 2008 modernization programme took hold (Gorenburg 2016).
Structural changes and improvements in technology were accompanied by advances in education and training in order to enhance the mobility and combat readiness of the armed forces. Increased funding meant that large-scale exercises, which had not taken place for almost two decades after the end of the Cold War, were reintroduced in 2009 (Trenin 2016c: 24). Since 2011, inter-service exercises involving up to 150,000 men have been held on a regular basis, preparing all the armed services for joint and combined combat operations for the first time (Norberg 2015). Fostering jointness was a central goal of the 2008 modernization plans, because lack of coordination had been a serious problem in Russian military operations throughout the post-Soviet era. Although the Russian armed forces’ capabilities in conducting sizeable inter-service operations have never been tested in an actual conflict situation, improvements in coordination, command and control were demonstrated in both Crimea and Syria on a limited scale.
The military modernization programme introduced in 2008 was the first plan for reform in the post-Soviet era that led to fundamental change. It is beyond doubt that it has resulted in considerable improvements in Russian military power. Having said this, there has been a tendency, especially in the West, to overstate the scale and implications of the reform programme both with regard to Russia’s military posture in absolute terms and its relative standing as a global military power. Just as the Russian armed forces were never as close to collapse during the Yeltsin era as often asserted, the idea of a Russian military resurgence that has turned the country into a serious global threat within a few years is exaggerated. Although the ongoing modernization process will almost certainly lead to further improvements in capabilities, significant systemic obstacles continue to stand in the path of Russia’s long-term military ambitions.
Manpower problems
Russia’s struggle to maintain its desired level of military manpower is an ongoing problem with no simple solution. The Soviet Union’s armed forces were comprised of over four million men. After the Cold War it was clear that near-Soviet force levels could and would not be maintained and significant cuts were required. The around 2.8 million personnel Russia inherited from the Soviet military were gradually reduced and a presidential decree issued in July 2016 fixed manpower levels in the armed forces at a maximum of one million (Presidential Decree 329, 2016). Although Russian officials have long referred to the one-million-man army, the country has struggled to achieve this level of manpower throughout the post-Soviet years. Russia’s actual military strength today is usually estimated at around 800,000 men, with some analysts putting this figure as low as 625,000 (Carlsson et al. 2013: 38). Russia’s desire to maintain a military of this size, in spite of not being able to do so, is often put down to conservative elements in the military leadership that have been unable to move on from Cold War thinking and who do ‘not want to part with [their] massive army’ (Barany 2005: 35). Throughout much of the 1990s and 2000s the consensus view was that the Russian military could never be fully modernized unless the large and mostly conscript-based army was abandoned in favour of smaller and more affordable professional units (Golts and Putnam 2004: 122; Klein 2009: 9). In the eyes of many observers, these would be fully sufficient for the ‘small and “soft” security threats [Russia] should anticipate in the future’ (Barany 2005: 49). The reasons for Russia’s insistence on maintaining a military one million strong are more complex than the inability of conservative generals to move on.