Yesterday’s Gazeta.ru recapped a brief Interfaks item saying the much-discussed Navy Main Staff move from Moscow to St. Petersburg will be delayed for an undetermined period of time. A Main Staff source told Interfaks:
“The transfer of the Navy Main Staff to Petersburg is put off to an undetermined time. Now the main efforts are concentrated on a radical optimization of its structure, which must be finished before year’s end.”
“At present the process of forming a compact command and control structure, which, being located in Petersburg, will be as close to the fleet as possible, is ongoing.”
The source says the group of staff officers who moved to Petersburg at the beginning of 2010 will stay in Admiralty and act as a Glavkomat representative. Navy CINC Admiral Vysotskiy has an office there, and he routinely visits St. Petersburg.
So maybe the ‘radical optimization’ [i.e. cut] in the Navy Main Staff is not going as smoothly as hoped back in the winter. Recall there were unofficial hopes and reports that the staff would be cut by mid-summer allowing the move to start at that time.
Russian Defense Policy 