Recognizing the armed forces' diminished conventional abilities, Russia's newly released national security doctrine downplayed threats from abroad, while indicating Russia could use nuclear weapons to defend itself against a large-scale attack. But the decline is as much a systemic phenomenon as it is economic, observers say. The soldiers go hungry, they don't get paid. There are some cases where soldiers are farmed out as labor to factories. Their salaries are stolen.
Soldiers beg in the Moscow subways for money.
Soldiers are reported to have sold equipment to the Chechen forces they are fighting. Even Russia's elite nuclear forces struggle to afford the most basic household commodities and often receive paychecks weeks late. The key to reform is to clear out the general officer corps and further shrink the force down to around 250,000, says retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a former National Security Agency director now with the Hudson Institute in Washington. You cannot change the mindset of a generation of officers educated under the Soviet system. Since the start of the Chechen conflict, the military has demanded and received more money from the government.