Putin fires top generals

[Secret Squirrel]

MOSCOW, Russia (*******) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has fired three generals and a top state security official in a shake-up seen as an attempt to end feuding in the top ranks and a response to recent losses linked to Chechnya.

The main casualty was General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the general staff. A Kremlin statement said Kvashnin, 57 and in the job since 1997, would be replaced by his deputy, Yuri Baluyevsky.

The head of Interior Ministry forces, General Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the top military commander in the North Caucasus, General Mikhail Labunets, and the deputy head of the FSB security service, Anatoly Yezhkov, also lost their jobs.

The Kremlin press office gave no reason for the dismissals, but analysts said Kvashnin had paid the price for a tug-of-war with Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, Putin's confidant. The two have been competing for effective control of the military.

The other three were punished for last month's brazen separatist raid on Ingushetia, neighboring the rebel region of Chechnya, in which 90 people were killed, analysts said.

Kvashnin's dismissal followed a decree by Putin cutting the powers of the general staff and reducing it to a department of the Defense Ministry.

As he sacked Kvashnin, Putin awarded him the "Services to the Motherland" order, third class. But Itar-Tass news agency quoted defense ministry sources as saying that Kvashnin had turned down an unspecified new job and quit the army.

Ivanov, who attended Putin's meeting with the newly appointed Baluyevsky, made clear that he and the president expected the new chief of the general staff to focus on military planning rather than on securing control over the military.

"After surviving a difficult period for its armed forces, the country now is in better shape and the general staff should concentrate more on prospects of developing the armed forces and think about future wars," he said in televised comments.

'Power struggle'
Russia's post-Soviet leaders have repeatedly failed in attempts to modernise the huge and ineffective armed forces, inherited from the Soviet Union.

After years of poor funding and negligence, the 1.3 million-strong force is beset by problems ranging from poor equipment and training to regular desertions of conscripts.


Putin had declared in his State of the Union address that reform of the military was a priority.
Putin made clear in his state of the nation address in May that military reform remained a primary goal.

Military officials have said the jockeying for influence between the Defense Ministry and the general staff -- a built-in feature of military life in Russia -- was one of the factors stalling any effort to carry out radical reforms.

Kvashnin came to prominence when he led the failed war to seize control of Chechnya in 1994-96. He has persistently clashed with defense ministers, calling for a buildup of massive ground forces at the expense of more sophisticated and modern branches of the military.

"Kvashnin was a master of intrigue," Interfax-AVN news agency quoted prominent general Leonid Ivashov as saying.

"He did this under former Defense Minister Marshal Igor Sergeyev as well as under the current Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, causing huge harm to the main principle of the armed forces -- single command."

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/07/19/putin.generals.reut/index.html

[2RHPZ]

2004-07-19 13:14

KVASHNIN HAS LEFT: WHAT WILL THE ARMY GAIN?


MOSCOW (RIA Novosti military commentator Viktor Litovkin) - Vladimir
Putin has signed an order dismissing Chief of the General Staff of
the Russian Armed Forces, General of the Army Anatoly Kvashnin, first
deputy minister of defence. Before that, Vladimir Putin signed a new
wording of the law "On Defence," which deprived the General Staff,
called the brains of the army, of its function as "the main agency of
operational control of the armed forces." Kvashnin lost the right to
appeal to the Supreme Commander-President directly, bypassing the
defence minister, and was degraded to the post of first deputy of
Sergei Ivanov.

Kvashnin is a bright individual with unlimited ambitions, who does
not spare himself or others. When he was a young man, a fighting
vehicle burst into flames and he rushed into it to save a private
disregarding the danger of detonation. Kvashnin never avoided the
difficult sides of military service. He took over command in Chechnya
in late 1994, when one general failed and another refused to assume
the difficult job. However, an operation to storm Grozny in the New
Year night of 1995, which he elaborated, ended in a tragedy: more
than 350 servicemen were killed only in the 131st Maikop Motorised
Brigade.

Uncontrollable drive, the inability and unwillingness to consider the
price of success measured in the number of lives were the old trump
cards of the Soviet school of military leadership. Anatoly Kvashnin
learned his lessons very well and applied them more than once when he
commanded a military district and became chief of the General Staff.
It was under him and with his energetic involvement that the Main
Command of the Land Forces was dissolved and later restored, that the
Volga-Urals military district was split and re-integrated, with the
headquarters moved from one city to another, and that the Strategic
Missile Force was integrated with the Space Forces and the Early
Warning System, only to become independent again.

He got away with anything, possibly because in conditions of general
decay in the army he did his best to preserve the country's main
weapons - the strategic deterrence forces, to create an integrated
system of their command, and to place a new missile on combat duty
that would ensure Russia's strategic security for at least 30-40
years more.

Kvashnin did not tolerate rivals. The list of victims of his
bureaucratic infighting includes Georgy Shpak, commander of the
Airborne Force, and Gennady Troshev, commander of the North Caucasian
military district. Kvashnin's favourite method is thrust and drive -
and a report to the president bypassing his direct superior (defence
minister), especially because he could do it by the law "On Defence,"
which granted equal rights to the chief of the General Staff and the
defence minister.

But amendments to the law, which the State Duma adopted without
notifying Kvashnin, put a full stop to this practice. Kvashnin has
lost. But will the army gain from his departure?

The army has had and still has many problems apart from relations
between the Defence Ministry and the General Staff. Though it has
been proclaimed more than once that it would be reformed - or has
been reformed, the Russian army remains Soviet in the form and
essence. The new methods of hostilities and new structures, which the
armies of all industrialised countries are developing, have failed to
take root in the Russian army.

In particular, the special operations command has not been created to
this day, there are no reliable reconnaissance systems, precision-
guided weapons and the possibility of quickly delivering troops not
by thousands of kilometres but to a small distance but at any time of
day and night and in any weather. Neither do we have an ideology and
principles of using such troops, including by rallying different
troops and resources under single command.

The military claim that the General Staff will at long last stop
fighting forleadership in taking defence decisions and will start
creating long-term plans of the application of the armed forces in
all possible situations. But to be able to do this, it should have
new officers and not the ones who graduated from Soviet military
schools.


Subject: RIAN: KVASHNIN HAS LEFT: WHAT WILL THE ARMY GAIN?