Sinking a symptom of Russia's military malaise

In this story: Graft and smuggling on rise 'Welded to the pier' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Douglas Herbert
CNN.com writer

LONDON (CNN) -- The sinking of the giant nuclear submarine Kursk in the icy waters of the Barents Sea, with 118 crew stranded aboard, is the latest in a litany of naval disasters that underscore the disarray in the former superpower's military, analysts say.

The simmering war in Chechnya -- Russia's second military showdown with the breakaway Republic in five years -- is draining funds from a military budget, which has plummeted by about 75 percent from Soviet-era spending levels, to around $4 billion.

	ALSO
Accident typifies plight of Russian military

At about $4 billion, the budget is less than 3 percent of the country's total gross domestic product.

The shriveling military budget, coupled with the inadequate training of conscripts, a flagging morale, and a traditional bias towards land-based ballistic missiles, has left the country's nuclear submarine fleet in a state of perilous disrepair, analysts contend.

At the same time, the rest of Russia's military has failed to reverse a steady, decade-long decline -- marked by soaring suicide rates in the army, rampant draft evasion and an alarming drop in the number of junior officers with battle expertise.

Many paratroopers are refusing to fight altogether - and getting away with it.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped officers and soldiers are increasingly moonlighting to supplement their meager salaries, according to Mark Galeotti, a Russian military analyst at Keele University in Britain.

Russian soldiers in Chechnya routinely have to cannibalize other vehicles for spare parts.

"What we are seeing is an across-the-board decay," said Galeotti. He believes it is misleading to say Russia's army consists of 1.2 million conscripts - down from 2.8 million in 1992 and around 5 million at the height of the Soviet period.

"What proportion of these soldiers can really fight?" he asks. "I think the Russian forces in reality are no more than 200,000 in terms of how we would genuinely assess (their battle preparedness). "

Russia suffered its worst submarine disaster in 1989, when the nuclear vessel Komsomolets caught fire off the coast of Norway after a series of electricity failures. Forty-two of the ship's 69 crew members lost their lives in that incident.

On many occasions before then -- and since - the Russian Navy's submarine fleet has suffered a series of embarrassing malfunctions, collisions, fires and explosions that have tarnished its image and provoked outcries from environmental watchdogs.

"They've never put as much emphasis (on the nuclear submarine force) as the U.S. has, and now it appears that it's getting even less attention," said David Gompert, the president of RAND Europe, a non-profit-making think tank.

"It's like the space program. When you see problems occur with the space program there's a powerful correlation between that and the level of funding and their ability to attract, and retain, exceptional talent."

Gompert acknowledged he was not familiar with the specific performance history of the Kursk, a 505-foot long behemoth weighing more than 14,000 tons that ranks as one of the largest submarines in the world.

Speaking generally, however, he said the Russian submarine forces had suffered dangerous neglect since the end of the Cold War -- as reflected in reduced operating times for vessels and diminished resources for maintenance.

"The length of time that these boats spend tied to the pier is much higher than it used to be for the Soviet Union.

"Any piece of machinery, including a submarine, really needs a certain level of operation to maintain. Nothing is worse for a ship than being welded to the pier."

There were no nuclear weapons on the Kursk, Russia's Defense Ministry said on Monday, noting that radiation levels on the stricken vessel were normal.

The submarine can remain submerged for up to four months, a point the Ministry invoked to suggest the crew is not in immediate danger.

Aleksandr Pekaev, a nuclear weapons analyst with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, estimates that Russia currently allots roughly equal chunks of its 140-billion ruble ($4 billion) military budget to strategic and conventional forces.

But nuclear submarines get only about 15 percent of the total defence procurement, which Pekaev says is not enough to maintain them at a proper level of preparedness.

"Russia's armed forces are inadequately financed, but nuclear submarines are financed even worse," Pekaev said.

Alarmingly, he added, more than 100 nuclear submarines have been decommissioned in Russia since the Soviet collapse, though only a small proportion of those have been properly dismantled. In many cases, he said, the vessels still retain their nuclear reactor cores.

Galeotti said Monday's sinking of the Kursk is symptomatic of a wider malaise afflicting all four branches of the Russian military -- land, sea, air and strategic forces.

He estimates that Russian servicemen these days are getting only about 40 percent of the training time they would have received under the Soviet regime.

"A Russian soldier spends more time washing his barracks or just going out and getting his food," Galeotti said. "You have pilots who after six months should be getting out there and flying but who are instead still sitting in a classroom."

In recent days, Russian President Vladimir Putin, has stepped into the fray, upbraiding his defence minister and a top general over their failure to resolve an ongoing feud over military reform.

Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev, the former head of the Strategic Rocket Forces, is opposed to major cuts in Russia's missile arsenal and wants to unite the country's nuclear forces under a single command.

His rival, general staff chief Anatoly Kvashnin advocates a much-reduced role for the Strategic Forces -- perhaps even folding them into the air force as a means of procuring extra cash for conventional troops.

Putin has no patience with the squabble. He believes there are more pressing priorities.

"Are our armed forces, our whole military component, effective?" he asked, at the start of the talks with his military chiefs aimed at setting out a blueprint for military reform up to 2015. "Unfortunately, they are not," he concluded.

Gompert, at RAND Europe, sees a positive development in Putin's seeming preference for a further paring of Russia's strategic forces.

"One can only hope that what they're going to do is cut back drastically on the number of forces they are attempting to maintain in the nuclear area."

Reuters contributed to this report.

Rescuers try to save more than 100 trapped in sunken Russian nuclear sub
August 14, 2000
Putin dismisses top brass
July 31, 2000
Scientists: Moscow financial crisis jars nuclear security
Jan. 31, 1997
CNN Cold War
The Bomb: Broken Arrows

Russian Ministry of Defence (in Russian)
Russian Government Internet Network Home Page
Russia Today

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.