Monthly Archives: June 2019

Promotion List

Posted on June 22, 2019 | 1 comment

The promotion list contains names of 552 generals and admirals against 730 the MOD says it has.

This link goes to a larger file with more data.

The newest promotees were announced on June 11, 2019.

1 Comment

Posted in Military Leadership

Russia Day Promotions

Posted on June 17, 2019 | 3 comments

RF President Vladimir Putin signed out his Russia Day promotion list on June 11. The MOD got 11 two-star and 14 one-star promotions. Putin’s alternative army — the National Guard — did almost as well receiving one three-star, five two-star, and 11 one-star promotions. Find the list here.

Newly minted Vice-Admiral Rekish

Newly minted Vice-Admiral Rekish

Putin’s list this time was interesting because four generals were picked up for two-star after waiting seven or eight years for it. They include:

  • Chief of Staff, First Deputy Commander, Aerospace Forces (VKS);
  • Commander, 33rd Missile Army, RVSN;
  • Commander, 20th CAA;
  • Commander, 36th CAA.

Putin, and Defense Minister Shoygu perhaps, really seem to like the NTsUO and the GSA’s Military Strategy Faculty at this time for some reason.

Other two-stars include the Chief of MOD’s GU MVS, a deputy chief of NTsUO (who picks up his second star in four years), the Chief of the Military Strategy Faculty at GSA, the chief of comms and deputy chief of staff for comms in the Eastern MD (strange choice for general-lieutenant), and the Chief of Staff, First Deputy Commander of the Pacific Fleet (VADM Rekish).

New one-stars commanding significant formations include:

  • 90th Tank Division, Central MD;
  • 76th Air-Assault Division, VDV;
  • Commander, 2nd MRD, Western MD;
  • Commander, 31st Submarine Division (SSBNs), Northern Fleet.

Staff officers getting their first stars include the chief of missile troops and artillery and chief of armor service (Central MD); a professor, Military Strategy Faculty (GSA); chief of personnel directorate (VKS); chief of NTsUO’s flight coordination center and chief of NTsUO’s territorial affiliate in the Black Sea Fleet.

Six promotees couldn’t be identified in a post. Two are new two-stars. We have to assume they only reach general-lieutenant without public mention if they serve in the GRU, SSO, et al.

Short and long promotion list files will be available in the next day or two.

3 Comments

Posted in Military Leadership

Tagged , ,

Military Academy Instructor Arrested in Bombing

Posted on June 15, 2019 | 4 comments

Kommersant recently covered what’s happened on this case. Recall on April 2 St. Petersburg’s Military-Space Academy (VKA) named for Mozhayskiy was the scene of an apparent terrorist bombing. But the prime suspect is an instructor, Colonel Rifat Zakirov —  combat engineer and decorated EOD expert with two tours in the Chechen wars to his credit. Other sources say he’s a lieutenant colonel. He’s under house arrest.

Rifat Zakirov

Rifat Zakirov

Zakirov was injured in the blast and couldn’t be questioned for nearly a month. Military investigators say he had TNT and bomb components taken as war trophies, and he’s been charged with theft of explosives as well as illegally possessing and transporting them. But they say he didn’t intend to blow up VKA. No, he just wanted to privatize another military apartment.

Yes, Zakirov hoped his desperate action would resolve his unsatisfactory housing situation.

To back things up a bit, Zakirov once had a 58-square-meter two-room apartment in Sertolovo outside St. Petersburg. It was a service apartment (belonging to the MOD) he received in 2004 and immediately privatized. This satisfied the MOD’s obligation to provide the career officer with permanent housing. The widowed Zakirov lived there with his two sons.

But things got complicated. Relatives came to live with him. He remarried. In 2016, he asked the MOD to improve his circumstances, now outside the norm for inhabitants per square meter. The military duly assigned him a new service apartment in St. Petersburg but said he couldn’t privatize it because he couldn’t return the “permanent” one in Sertolovo where left his relatives.

So Zakirov hatched the plot to plant an explosive device, discover, and disarm it. As a hero, the MOD wouldn’t deny another request to privatize his second, larger apartment.

When Zakirov and colleagues entered the VKA building on April 2, he “noticed” a suspicious package with a mobile phone with wires inside. He sounded the alarm and evacuated cadets and staff. Wearing a protective vest and helmet, he was about to cover the bomb with a vest when it detonated. The bomb contained no shrapnel and, other than Zakirov, no one was seriously hurt by the explosion.

If someone other than the GVSU claimed all this, you’d say he was crazy.

4 Comments

Posted in Aerospace Forces, Crime and Corruption, Military Housing

Tagged , , , ,

New Tank Regiment?

Posted on June 13, 2019 | 2 comments

RG gave us the scantest info. The Russian Army is upgrading an independent tank battalion to a regiment in Smolensk oblast, in the Western MD. The new regiment will belong to one of the 20th CAA’s motorized rifle divisions.

It reportedly will be outfitted with T-72BA tanks, BMP-2 AIFVs, engineer and repair-recovery vehicles, air defense, and recce.

According to RG, the 20th CAA is the largest “large formation” [объединение — anything above a division] in Russia’s armed forces. It is deployed along Russia’s western border in Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Smolensk oblasts.

Then one has to scrounge. There’s info of varying quality and completeness available. Sometimes you find something like this or this.

The new tank regiment will be part of the 144th Motorized Rifle Division, based in Smolensk and Bryansk oblasts. The 144th at present may look like this:

  • Headquarters (Yelnya, Smolensk obl.)
  • 448th Motorized Rifle Regiment (Klintsy, Bryansk obl.)
  • 182nd Motorized Rifle Regiment (Zaymishche, Bryansk obl.)
  • 254th Motorized Rifle Regiment (Klintsy)
  • 228th Tank Regiment (Klintsy)
  • 856th Self-Propelled Artillery Regiment (Pochep, Bryansk obl.)
  • 1259th SAM Regiment (???)
  • 673rd SAM Battalion (???)
  • 148th Reconnaissance Battalion (Smolensk)
  • 1281st Anti-Tank Battalion (Yelnya)
  • 295th Engineer Battalion (Yelnya)
  • 686th Signals Battalion (Smolensk)
  • 1032nd Material Support Battalion (Pochep)
  • 150th Medical Battalion (Pochep)
  • UAV Company (???)
  • EW Company (???)
  • Radiological, Chemical, Biological Defense Company (???)

In the first link above, Yuriy Barash, a Ukrainian observer, maintains in 2017 the 144th began forming up its 182nd MRR, 228th TR, and 1259th SAM Regiment as well as anti-tank, material support, and medical battalions. It had not started forming up the 254th MRR or the specialist companies, according to him.

T-72

So does the 228th Tank Regiment already exist? No and yes.

If Barash’s TO&E for the 144th isn’t wrong (but it could be), the 448th MRR and 856th SP Artillery Regiment appear to be its only fleshed out and combat-capable units. In 2017, he held only 40 T-72s in the division (the tank battalion of the 448th).

CAST, however, suggested that the 144th has an independent tank battalion that will be upgraded to a regiment, to become the 228th TR.

There are also discrepancies regarding the locations of different units.

Welcome to following Russia’s OOB.

Here’s the moral. Saying you have a division on your western border is one thing;  actually having one is something else. 

2 Comments

Posted in Ground Troops, Order-of-Battle

Tagged , , , , ,

Expected in 2019

Posted on June 6, 2019 | 3 comments

On June 4, Sergey Shoygu told the Russian Defense Ministry collegium the armed forces will receive 400 new or modernized armored vehicles before the end of this year. T-90M, T-72B3M, and T-80BVM tanks and BMP-1AM infantry fighting vehicles are among the systems to be delivered.

T-90M

T-90M

Interfaks-AVN reported that the T-90M was developed through the Proryv-3 [Breakthrough-3] R&D program — a deep modernization of the T-90 fielded in the mid-1990s. The T-90M has a new turret, 125-mm main gun, remote-controlled 12.7-mm machine gun, and digital fire control.

The Pacific Fleet’s Troops and Forces in the North-East are supposed to get more updated MiG-31BM interceptors, T-80BVM tanks, and BMP-2M IFVs, according to Interfaks-AVN.

3 Comments

Posted in Cheap Posts, Force Modernization, Ground Troops

Foreign Electronics Still Preferred

Posted on June 2, 2019 | 6 comments

State-owned technology conglomerate Rostekh reports that the Russian government purchases imported electronics four and a half times more often than comparable domestic products.

The complaint came from Sergey Sakhnenko — industrial director of Rostekh’s radioelectronics cluster (REK) — at a joint meeting of the Bureau of the Union of Machinebuilders of Russia and the Bureau of the Association “League for Assistance to Defense Industries” on May 31.

Sergey Sakhnenko

Sakhnenko

According to Interfaks-AVN, Sakhnenko said:

“The volume of sales of products from REK enterprises to federal government executive organs in the medical equipment, computing technology, telecommunications equipment segments and other electronics in 2018 amounted to 18 billion rubles [$275 million]. Meanwhile, the volume of state purchases just in the sphere of IT and telecommunications came to not less than 100 billion rubles [$1.5 billion] for the year.

In Sakhnenko’s words, foreign products dominate Russian government purchasing despite the existence of Russian-made analogues comparable in quality and characteristics to imported equipment.

Replying for the government, Deputy PM and arms tsar Yuriy Borisov could only state the obvious. The Russian radioelectronics industry faces the task of dominating its internal market. Domestic technology should be introduced dynamically and commercialized. Besides dominating its home market, Russian technology has to be better positioned in foreign markets. “Only under such a state policy can we raise this sector,” he said.

Pretty thin stuff for Russian electronics manufacturers.

Suffice it to say, Russia’s import substitution policies since 2014 haven’t dented Moscow’s dependence on foreign high technology products. It’s a lingering pressure point the U.S. and NATO could exploit but for the greed of their politicians and companies still more than willing to do business with Russia.

6 Comments

Posted in Defense Industry

Tagged , , , , , ,