Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: La lotta tra il Cremlino e l'Apparato Militare-Industriale

Interessante articolo dal FT:
 
Russia’s military: modern warfare the Moscow way
Russia’s purchase of two Mistral class French amphibious assault ships 
in June was a curious deal. Despite the navy deriding the vessel as “a 
floating box”, and domestic shipbuilders fighting it tooth and nail, 
Moscow’s defence ministry rammed the $1.7bn sale through in an effort to 
chastise complacent domestic defence manufacturers. The message: the 
ministry would buy foreign arms if homegrown suppliers could not make 
them for a reasonable price.
The department “wanted to kick local industry, to show them that they 
are not a natural monopoly”, says Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre 
for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow defence consultancy.
For decades, the secretive Voenno Promyshlenny Kompleks, or 
military-industrial complex, has enjoyed the status of a virtual state 
within a state. Operating from super secret high-tech plants, the 
defence industry’s leading companies have long seemed akin to feudal 
fiefdoms, accustomed to dictating terms to the government.
But for the first time in 20 years, the Kremlin is trying to reform the 
sector, as part of a planned Rbs19,000bn ($628bn) remilitarisation drive 
to return what was once the world’s most powerful conventional army to a 
measure of its former self. The measures are aimed at transforming the 
dysfunctional military from a mass-mobilisation force reliant on 
conscripts to a high-tech, all-professional army similar to that of the 
UK and the US.
Announced in the wake of the successful war against Georgia in 2008, the 
moves appear to be part of a more assertive global posture, backing up 
diplomatic attempts to rebuild hegemony in the former imperial – both 
tsarist and Soviet – hinterlands.
Alexander Golts, an independent defence analyst, says the 
remilitarisation has more spiritual than practical or strategic 
significance for the government, given that Russia has yet to identify a 
clear enemy. “This army is more of a myth than reality,” he says. “A 
great power has to have a great army.”
Another central goal of the reform is political. Raising the esteem of 
the demoralised military, which has already been cut to 1m since 2010, 
is an important consideration for Vladimir Putin, currently prime 
minister but likely to be re-elected president in March. This need is 
likely to be felt especially acutely in light of recent protests in 
Moscow and other Russian cities following rigged parliamentary elections 
in December. The military should be one of Mr Putin’s main 
constituencies, given his hardline militaristic and patriotic image; in 
practice, however, according to one analyst, they tend to back Communist 
or nationalist parties in elections.
Mr Putin has appointed one of the country’s most popular politicians as 
a personal emissary to the defence sector. Dmitry Rogozin, the former 
Nato ambassador, was last month brought back from Brussels to take on 
the role of deputy prime minister in charge of military industries.
Analysts say spending an additional Rbs19,000bn roubles by 2020 is money 
the government can ill-afford to lavish on the military. Former finance 
minister Alexei Kudrin, who left his job in September amid a 
disagreement with the Kremlin over defence spending, said the extra 
equipment will cost 3 per cent of gross domestic product in the next 
three years, money that could be better used for education and 
healthcare. “This programme is completely impossible to implement with 
our defence industry in the current state,” he told a conference on 
January 19. “We simply can’t afford this [increase]. We can’t afford to 
have such an army.”
Meanwhile, simply throwing more roubles at companies operating in the 
notoriously corrupt defence sector is unlikely to produce the desired 
results if, to quote Mr Putin, “they become too familiar with the money”.
The episode with the Mistral was the first battle in a war between the 
defence ministry and the VPK over pricing, part of an effort to subdue 
the powerful defence chieftains.
When Mr Putin became president in 2000, the military had been starved of 
money following a decade-long “procurement holiday”. But under an 
assertive president, keen to restore the power and status lost during 
the chaotic years after the fall of the Soviet Union, defence budgets 
crept up. Experts claim, however, that this yielded little by way of 
frontline results.
“This money somehow evaporated,” says Mr Pukhov. Domestic suppliers 
simply increased prices for hardware in line with the rising budgets. 
“It happens all over the world – a lot of money is stolen because 
budgets are secret, because they say ‘national security,’” he says. 
“Just like when the Pentagon buys a hammer for $500, the same thing 
happens here. But admittedly on a larger scale.”
Subduing the defence industry chieftains of the VPK is one of the main 
aims of the reforms. By 2007, waste and inflated costs were sapping so 
much of the military budget that Mr Putin sacked his ally, Sergei 
Ivanov, as defence minister and replaced him with the relatively unknown 
Anatoly Serdyukov. The former head of the tax inspectorate made his name 
dismantling Yukos, once Russia’s largest oil company, whose head – 
Mikhail Khodorkovsky – had come into conflict with the Kremlin and was 
jailed on tax fraud charges while Yukos was, in effect, nationalised.
Mr Serdyukov’s role in the dismantling of Yukos brought him to the 
attention of the Kremlin. “He demonstrated his reliability,” says Mr 
Pukhov. “If he could kill Yukos, he could take on the army and the 
defence industries.” But curbing the power of defence industry bosses is 
likely to prove harder by an order of magnitude.
Labelled by Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta as “an uncompromising 
fighter against jacked up prices”, he has for the past four years been 
on a mission to clean up the defence sector, where cost overruns are 
rife, delays endemic and scandals common. When the director of one 
company, contracted to repair the navy’s flagship, Peter the Great, was 
arrested last June, officials found $1m stashed in his piano. He was 
last year charged with defrauding the government.
. . .
Mr Serdyukov championed the purchase of the Mistral and following his 
victory, tackled the holiest of holies: the strategic missile industry. 
This particular branch of the military establishment has long enjoyed 
protection – and generous funding – from Moscow to ensure that Russia 
kept pace with the US in nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic 
missiles (ICBMs). But between 2004 and 2010 several failed tests of the 
Bulava missile, the next generation ICBM, exposed the weaknesses of what 
was supposed to be Russia’s most advanced weaponry.
The defence ministry has been unusually hard-nosed about negotiating for 
a new crop of ballistic missiles. It ruffled so many feathers that in 
July, Yuri Solomonov, Russia’s head of strategic missile production, 
gave an interview to the Kommersant newspaper. “Has our ministry of 
defence turned into a tax inspectorate?” he demanded imperiously. 
“During the days of the USSR, the state used to help [the industry], now 
it just gets in the way.”
In the days of the Soviet Union, men such as Mr Solomonov, with 
high-level party connections, enjoyed almost unlimited power. But today 
the tables are turned, and the fact that Mr Solomonov went to the press 
is seen as a sign that industry chieftains are losing the battle against 
reform. He complained that squabbling by “government bean counters” over 
the prices of ICBMs meant the scheduled supply of weapons for 2011 would 
not be met. By the end of the year, according to Mr Golts, contracts had 
been signed but “it is unclear if they will be fulfilled”.
. . .
The response by the defence ministry was particularly brutal when the 
Ural Wagon Factory, which makes the T-90 tank, the backbone of the 
military, tried to raise prices from Rbs70m to Rbs118m.
In March, Gen Alexander Postnikov, commander of Russian ground forces, 
took the unprecedented step of publicly criticising the T-90 tank as 
“the 17th modification of the Soviet T-72”, produced first in 1973. He 
added that, for Rbs118m, “it would be better to buy three German 
Leopards [tanks]”.
Then in November Nikolai Makarov, deputy defence minister, said the T-90 
was “out of date” and its gun had barely half the range of a comparable 
Israeli tank, the Merkava. By the end of the year, the military had 
bought no T-90s.
A showdown was on the cards, and it came on December 15, during Mr 
Putin’s annual nationally televised phone-in show. From a studio in 
Moscow, the prime minister had to field a barrage of question from the 
Ural Wagon Factory. The microphone was handed to a worker who ripped 
into Mr Serdyukov: “We are ready to develop new technology. But we have 
the impression, that the minister of defence doesn’t need it,” he said. 
“The military just fixes old pieces, they don’t order new ones. The 
purchasing is done by people who clearly are not specialists. So why 
don’t you throw out that Serdyukov, and Makarov for saying such things, 
and appoint a good minister?”
Mr Putin responded that, while the public barbs directed by the defence 
ministry at the T-90 were “unacceptable ... for us it is important that 
the Rbs20tn which we have set aside till 2020 for the rearming of the 
army and fleet is spent effectively”.
But another worker said that they were ready to come to Moscow and “take 
care of” the throngs of protesters who had been marching for the past 
month against the prime minister. The message, as one analyst put it, 
was unmistakable: “The VPK will support you politically, Mr Putin, just 
buy our tanks.”
 
 
PP

 Interessante articolo dal FT:
 
Ok, grazie... messo subito nella cartella "fuffa"
 
Ciao!
 
 

 Ok, grazie... messo subito nella cartella "fuffa"
 
Ignorante e orgoglioso di esserlo il nostro resident alien
 
PP
 

 Ignorante e orgoglioso di esserlo il nostro resident alien
 
not alien, only colion.
 
<:3)-