The Russian government has 17 to 23 ministries that have military or paramilitary organizations. They are experiencing some of the same problems as the army. There needs to be stability in Russia for democratic institutions to take root and grow. The heart of the problems is Russian army leaders want to keep intact the force structure they inherited from the Soviet Union, analysts said. The large force structure causes many problems.
Many units are undermanned, with skeleton crews manning companies, battalions and regiments.
The military must spend money on personnel, which leaves less for training. Steaming hours for the navy and flying hours for aviators have been reduced so much as to be irrelevant, officials said. If Russia's economy gets better by 2005, then they can bring the numbers back up. U.S. officials also said Russia must make force structure changes. Factions in the Russian ministry of defense clearly favor bringing the Russian army down to 12 to 15 trained and ready divisions, said U.S. officials.