The Russian armed forces faced critical challenges following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Over the following decade, the services had to confront the reality of a smaller establishment strength, with units and equipment allocated to newly independent republics of the former Soviet Union. They also had to deal with the legacy of the 1979–89 Afghanistan war, the damaging wars in Chechnya, the need to reshape Russia’s defence organisations, and personnel and funding crises. Additionally, economic problems had serious implications for defence funding: budgets fell sharply and procurement atrophied. Service chiefs, meanwhile, were unable over the decade to establish balanced and well-trained forces equipped with modern weapons. Factors stemming from the Soviet legacy also helped stymie their ambitions, including a complicated deployment system that was designed to bring combat formations to readiness by mobilising a reserve component and a vast array of equipment – much held in store – intended to outfit these forces.1 Indeed, these arrangements had ramifications. Then-president Boris Yeltsin’s decision not to issue a mobilisation order in advance of the First Chechen War meant that Russia’s formations sent there were in effect ad hoc and only brought up to strength by drafting in troops from disparate units.
There were fitful – and unsuccessful – attempts to initiate reforms during the 1990s, largely aiming to generate a combat-ready core within this overall structure. However, matters only began to improve in 2003 when the Ministry of Defence (MoD) formally introduced a contractservice initiative (though this was itself briefly reversed in 2009–10), and after 2007–08, when experiments began to improve command and control by activating strategic commands.2 This coincided with the MoD being tasked with fundamental change in the wake of the August 2008 war with Georgia, which heralded the shift away from the mass-mobilisation model.
Key takeaways
The New Look programme was designed to transform armed forces that still reflected the Soviet-era mass-mobilisation army into a modern combat-ready force held at high readiness.
Russia’s experiences in the Chechen wars reinvigorated reform aspirations. In the first war, Russia’s forces there were often understrength and it was difficult to deploy coherent units. The Second Chechen War saw a modest improvement, and performance in the 2008 Georgia war was a key impetus for reform.
Although the reforms after 2008 finally led to fundamental change, some Russian military leaders – notably Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov – had long advocated reforms that would lead to restructured, more professional and higher-readiness formations.
COMMAND AND CONTROL IMPROVES
The reforms were also intended to streamline command and control. Military districts were reduced in number and in 2010 four strategic commands were created, rising to five in 2015. A fifth military district was due to be formed in 2021.
MANOEUVRE COMBAT POWER STILL VITAL
Russia has developed capabilities that enable actions short of war and has honed existing competencies in areas like electronic warfare. But armour and artillery modernisation, together with the moves to improve command and control, organisation and deployability, indicate that the ability to conduct rapid deep-strike operations remains an aspiration.
Personnel and the mass-mobilisation legacy
Russia’s legacy mass-mobilisation system, in which the armed forces would be brought up to wartime strength by recalling reservists, meant that both Soviet-era military formations and, until 2008, their Russian successors effectively had two distinct tables of organisation and equipment (TOE).3
The wartime TOE set out the number of personnel and equipment required for a military operation, whereas its peacetime counterpart indicated the numbers intended for daily routines and combat training. Due to the different tasks required, these differed significantly in scale and composition. The plan was that units would in crisis or wartime be brought to strength with reservists, also gaining additional vehicles from equipment storage bases or from the civilian sector. These differential TOEs were seen not only in motor-rifle and tank divisions but also in the air force, air-defence formations and even in the Strategic Rocket Forces.4
Readiness, already challenged by the nature of the mobilisation model, was further tested by personnel shortages.5 All battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, armies and districts were short of personnel. These shortages resulted from troops leaving service, transferring to other postings or leaving for training courses – in these cases of ‘current’ shortages, posts remained vacant. Units also experienced ‘temporary’ personnel shortages, when soldiers were temporarily unable to perform their tasks, for instance due to a tour of duty, a spell in hospital or a period of leave.
If a unit were deployed on operations, it had to transition to its wartime TOE, rectifying its ‘current’ and ‘temporary’ personnel shortages and taking from storage additional equipment. Without mobilisation, it was difficult to compensate for these personnel shortages.
There were broader challenges facing Russia’s service personnel in the 1990s, ranging from poor conditions and pay to the persistence of practices like dedovshchína (‘hazing’ or bullying) – and even the hiring of military personnel for labour.6 (Authorities attempted to address practices like the latter through legislation after the mid-2000s.) Meanwhile, Russia’s military formations were still dominated by conscripts. Conscription had a number of functions. It generated, each year, thousands of recruits arriving at reception centres and entering training, eventually to emerge on unit postings. It meant that there was, across society, a level of military experience that would be useful should mobilisation occur. Also, after contract-service initiatives began to be introduced after 1992, it was hoped that some conscripts would then decide to stay on as contractors, thus building up a more professional body of troops.7
However, challenges arose in the 1990s, as Russia experienced the results of declining birth rates. Between 1987 and 1999, live male births in Russia fell by around half, meaning that in time fewer young men were available to be called up – a challenge compounded by plans in 2008 to reduce the term of conscript service from two years to one.8 Additionally, more modern and more technically complex military equipment required more experienced and generally longer-serving troops.
This was the Soviet-era legacy: the complex system of mobilisation deployment that, for many years, frustrated many of Russia’s military leaders. And, despite the reform initiatives in the 1990s and from 2005–08, a qualified solution only emerged in 2008, when the mass-mobilisation principle came to an end and concerted effort began to generate contractor-staffed combat-ready formations.
