Tag Archives: Aleksandr Belevitin

Defense News

Posted on April 25, 2012 | 1 comment

Some Russian defense news from Tuesday, April 24 . . .

Dmitriy Rogozin (photo: RIA Novosti / Aleksey Druzhinin)

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitriy Rogozin generated a good bit of news during his visit to the Urals last week.  It’s hard to keep up with him.  In a sense, it’d be a real shame if he’s not in the next government.

Krasnaya zvezda published a wrap of his remarks.

Rogozin indicated Russia will demand the best new weapons from its OPK, not “metal hulks” that are soon scrapped.  He laid out his reasons for not buying foreign armaments.  And, he says, Russia doesn’t want to be China, blindly copying foreign models.  But he said his country still wants ideas and technology, if not a lot of hardware, from abroad.

Rogozin blames Russia’s space launch woes of the weakness of its “element” or component base.

RIA Novosti reported his assessment that Russian military electronics lag foreign developments by 5-12 years.  Russia doubled its investment in electronics last year according to Rogozin.

But back to KZ . . . it gave this interesting Rogozin quote:

“Russia must no longer be a hydrocarbon partner, it’s time for us to become an industrial power [hasn’t this time passed?].  We could have become such a power in the last century.  Now it’s important to overcome the gap in Russia’s history.  If business won’t participate in the country’s development, then we won’t achieve anything.”

In some non-Rogozin stories . . .

Militaryparitet.com cited a blog citing Interfaks to the effect that Kurganmashzavod will not be asked to renew production of BMP-3s for the army despite earlier indications it would.  The item notes the President’s polpred in the Urals saying the army has also declined to buy the BMD-4M.

Mil.ru wrote about Ka-52 helo training at Chernigovka army air base in Primorskiy Kray.  More than half the base’s pilots already practiced on the Ka-52 at the Torzhok training center.  Chernigovka will be completely reequipped with the new helo this year, according to the Defense Ministry website.  The “intensity” of flight exercises at the base doubled over the last year and increased 45 percent in the first three months of 2012.

Mil.ru also mentioned the completion of LRA training in the Far East.  There were 40 bomber flights and ten cruise missile launches on the Litovka range according to the Defense Ministry.

Vzglyad citing Interfaks reported on Irkut’s president saying the company will make a combat version of the Yak-130 trainer.  It will have greater thrust and be intended for Russia and for export.

Last, an update on the Belevitin corruption case.  Former GVMU chief, Aleksandr Belevitin faces malfeasance and bribery charges that could net him a total of 22 years in prison.  Pretty harsh by Russian standards.  The state is also seeking 51 million rubles in damages from him.  His defense is still examining the prosecutor’s case against him.  Recall the state believes he and his deputy took bribes in return for procuring overpriced MRI machines from a foreign firm.

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Posted in Crime and Corruption, Defense Industry, Defense News, Force Modernization, Training and Exercises

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Thickening Clouds

Posted on February 19, 2012 | 1 comment

Deputy PM Rogozin and Serdyukov (photo: Yuriy Magas)

Anatoliy Serdyukov completed his fifth year as Russia’s Defense Minister on Wednesday (February 15).

But the inimitable Argumenty nedeli concludes “clouds are thickening” around him. 

AN says Serdyukov’s in the “eye of a storm” of PA cadre changes, and he’s begun sacrificing subordinates to save himself.

The paper’s Defense Ministry source claims there will be a large number of resignations from “support structures controlled by the military department,” i.e. the quasi-commercialized, civilianized logistic agencies established to outsource “non-core” military functions.

OAO Slavyanka — responsible for housing and communal services in military towns — will lose its general director, Aleksandr Yelkin, over poor winter preparations and boiler breakdowns in Murmansk, Kaliningrad, and the Far East. 

Not surprisingly, the source says this decision followed Prime Minister Putin’s harsh criticism of Serdyukov on February 9.  See Kommersant, Komsomolskaya pravda, Nezavisimaya gazeta, or Newsru.com for more on this.

The general director of Agroprom — an affiliate of OAO Oboronservis — Natalya Dynkova, lost her position for “redistributing” the military food procurement market.  Agroprom declined an AN request for comment on Dynkova’s situation.

AN’s source also says Serdyukov’s apparat chief [chief of staff] Yelena Vasilyeva is also “hanging by a thread.”  From detention, the indicted former chief of GVMU, General-Major Aleksandr Belevitin has given evidence against her. 

Several months ago, AN claimed dustups with Vasilyeva led to former Deputy Defense Minister Mokretsov’s departure as well as complaints from high-ranking civilians and officers.

Finally, AN’s officer source says the FSB is investigating and arresting some people connected to the Defense Ministry’s commercial structures.  He concludes Serdyukov is ridding himself of people who could compromise him or interfere with him finding a place in once-and-future president Putin’s new government this spring.

BFM.ru sounded a separate but similar note reporting that the chief of a firm entrusted with selling excess Defense Ministry property is suspected of fraud. 

General director of the “Expert” Legal Support Center, Ye. F. Smetanova  allegedly sold military property for reduced prices in exchange for kickbacks ranging from 5 to 25 percent of the transaction, according to the MVD.  She reportedly received 18 million rubles for endorsing the sale of four Samara Voyentorgy for 147 million. 

Investigators are trying to identify other Defense Ministry properties sold with kickbacks as well as possible co-conspirators in the schemes.

In 2011, the Defense Ministry conducted 43 auctions and sold real estate for 4.7 billion rubles.  Movable military property was sold to the tune of 560 million.

It’s worth recalling the Main Military Prosecutor’s words about the scale of Defense Ministry corruption in 2011.  He singled out commercial firms outsourcing for the military and violations of auction rules as particular problems, along with routine kickbacks and bribery.

Where does this leave us?

Things aren’t so rosy for Serdyukov right now. 

For one thing, Rogozin’s replacement of the virtually invisible Sergey Ivanov has probably been a near-daily irritation for the Defense Minister.

Even after five years, it’s still hard to get a handle on all the military’s “financial flows.” 

And resignations and reports of corruption don’t reflect well on Serdyukov.

Still, Serdyukov remains a member of Team Putin, and he’s probably secure.  The election season makes everyone nervous, and it’s hard to say who’s driving corruption charges.  Shaking out some incompetent or corrupt defense officials might serve to create the impression that Prime Minister Putin’s on top of things.

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Posted in Civil-Military Relations, Crime and Corruption, Military Housing, Military Leadership, Serdyukov's Reforms

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Military Medicine Gets an Unsat

Posted on December 15, 2011 | Leave a comment

Valentina Matviyenko

We’ve seen reports of what reforms have done to Russian military medicine, but what follows is the first comprehensive review of its condition.  Cuts and reorganizations are on Defense Minister Serdyukov, but, to be fair, infrastructure deficiencies long predated him.  Military medicine is an area where he deserves some criticism.  But it’s unclear why it was the weak point chosen for an attack on his management, or why Valentina Matviyenko was the one to deliver it.  In any event, with the most recent chief of military medicine now in prison awaiting trial, it’s easy to conclude there are some pretty significant systemic problems.

Nezavisimaya gazeta reported Monday that a Federation Council panel on the social defense of servicemen has, not surprisingly, given military medicine an unsatisfactory evaluation.  It came despite a positive self-assessment from the Main Military-Medical Directorate (GVMU).  NG’s Sergey Konovalov said Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko, who conducted the session, repeated everything critical about military medicine heard recently from social organizations, parties, and the media.

Responding to the main report given by acting GVMU Chief, Colonel Anatoliy Kalmykov, Matviyenko said:

“You gave a positive assessment, you said that military medicine is coping with its missions.  And at the same time your own slide shows a growth in illnesses among servicemen . . . .  It’s higher than illnesses in the civilian population . . . .   Is it forbidden to evaluate yourself more critically?  Stop with this nonsense, comrade Colonel . . . .”

Konovalov notes for readers that Kalmykov’s only been at his temporary post for three weeks.  He’s taking the spot of General-Major Aleksandr Belevitin who’s in jail awaiting trial on corruption charges as well for an alleged attempt to arrange the murder of a witness.

He continues with Matviyenko’s remarks:

“. . . today we face an imbalance between the state’s obligations in the military medical sphere and the real financial resources allocated for this purpose.  Cuts in military hospitals, polyclinics have created problems in giving medical assistance.  In 17 regions, military-medical departments are lacking, in 30 military units, they are deployed very remotely from them, and the great distance is becoming an insurmountable obstacle to treating military service veterans.”

Matviyenko expressed concern about cutting officers and replacing them with civilian workers in military medicine.

An Audit Chamber auditor told the FC panel more than 1,000 Defense Ministry medical units and departments (38 percent of the total) occupy buildings and spaces which don’t meet technical and sanitary norms.  And 735 medical facilities (27 percent) need capital repair.  New medical equipment the Defense Ministry languishes because there aren’t medical buildings and centers in which it’s possible to treat patients.

The military’s representatives apparently claimed a lack of money.  But the Finance Ministry’s Director of the Department for Budget Policy in Military and Law Enforcement Services and State Defense Order, Aleksey Kaulbars rejected this:

“Just purely for health care, on the order of 39 billion rubles are allocated for the Defense Ministry.   A little more than 60% has been expended according to the situation as of today.  And what kind of grievances that it is insufficiently financed are possible in connection with this?  For health care facility construction, the assimilation is 30%.  Colleagues, what are we talking about?”

First Deputy GVP Andrey Nikulishchin is afraid unfinished construction and other military medical problems are connected with corruption.  He suggests that military medical units get only 20-50 percent of the medicines they require.  He blames elevated prices and “nontransparent” trade in them (presumably in addition to corruption).

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Posted in Crime and Corruption, Military Budget, Military Medicine

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Sick in the Urals, and Elsewhere

Posted on January 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

The Defense Ministry’s suddenly got its hands full of sick conscripts in the Urals, Kaliningrad, and possibly Novosibirsk.  It’s also just a little defensive about the situation.

The situation sounds like it’s close to getting out of control.  First, it points up the poor health of many Russian conscripts coming into the army.  It  undermines Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov’s talk of “humanizing” conscript service.  And it returns us to the issue of the cuts in military medicine that several commentators have decried.  The issue of swine flu in the Urals is of more general concern. 

This round of problems with sick conscripts surfaced on 16 January when Konstantin Tsybuk died of pneumonia.  He served in v / ch 86727, the 255th Combined Arms Training Range in Chebarkul.  His duty officer, a Lieutenant Igor Gurov, didn’t report finding him ill, or seek medical assistance.  Investigators are now looking at negligence charges against Gurov.  The 20-year-old Tsybuk left a wife and infant daughter behind.  ITAR-TASS has reported there are 63 other pneumonia cases in Chebarkul’s military hospital.

As early as 19 January, RIA Novosti reported 25 soldiers from various garrisons were in Chernyakhovsk’s hospital with pneumonia.  A Baltic Fleet prosecutor was also on scene checking sanitary, heating, and clothing conditions in their units.

Svpressa.ru gave a full run-down on other reported pneumonia outbreaks in the army, including 100 cases in Novosibirsk, and 26 in Saransk.

On Friday, a conscript named Yevgeniy Lantsov apparently died from swine flu (A/H1N1 – California / Mexico) in the Chelyabinsk Oblast Clinical Hospital.  Lantsov was drafted from Kemerovo on 20 December, and served briefly in v / ch 69806, the first-rank air base at Chelyabinsk / Shagol.  He was the leading edge of a swine flu outbreak in Chelyabinsk.  Four locals have died since, and RIA Novosti reports 50 cases in the city.

On Monday, conscript Sergey Vasilyev serving in v / ch 55059, a training regiment at the former PUrVO junior specialist training center in Yelan, died of pneumonia in the 354th District Military Hospital in Yekaterinburg.  The Main Military Investigative Directorate is currently investigating his death for evidence of negligence.

The Defense Ministry’s mounted something of a PR campaign to counter bad publicity about sick conscripts.  Krasnaya zvezda advised citizens not to be alarmed about the “sanitary-epidemiological situation” in the Armed Forces.  It claimed the military’s sickness rate is down 21 percent on average compared with last year, specifically down 24 percent in the Western MD, 15 percent in the Central and Eastern MDs, and 11 percent in the Southern MD.  It says pneumonia cases are down 15 percent, and most are mild. 

Of course, we aren’t told what the absolute numbers were last year (or over many years), only about a relative improvement.  And none of these districts even existed last year, so there is lots of room for fudging the numbers. 

Vesti.ru covered Serdyukov’s visit to Tyumen and Tomsk last weekend where he outlined Defense Ministry efforts to prevent further outbreaks:

“A decision’s been made:  where the temperature drops below minus 20 degrees (-4° F), guard duty will be cut from two to one hour.  And outside drills will be moved indoors.”

“The entire central Defense Ministry apparatus is strictly following these issues.  Each of my deputies is observing a distinct region, how the situation is taking shape there.”

“I submit that we’ll handle the situation.”

Serdyukov was in Tyumen looking at establishing a presidential cadet school, ironically, on the grounds of a former military-medical institute where army medics were once trained.

Vesti.ru reported that sick conscripts said their barracks were practically unheated, and they had to sleep in their uniforms. 

Serdyukov ordered the Chief of the Main Military-Medical Directorate, General-Major Aleksandr Belevitin and a team of specialists to the area to investigate and check on measures to prevent further spread of viral and acute respiratory infections.

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Posted in Conscription, Law, Order, and Discipline, Manpower, Military Housing

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Another One for the ‘Northern Capital’

Posted on May 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

Argumenty.ru on Friday reported a Main Military-Medical Directorate (ГВМУ or GVMU) source says Russia’s military-medical headquarters will relocate from Moscow to St. Petersburg.  Although no timetable is specified, it has been decided that GVMU will end up sharing the complex of the Military-Medical Academy (ВМА or VMA) in Piter.

Military-Medical Academy

The GVMU source said:

“This issue was raised and decided  positively from the moment when General-Major of the Medical Service Aleksandr Belevitin transferred from the post of VMA chief to the post of GVMU chief.”

General-Major Aleksandr Belevitin

A VMA source says:

“The issue is being actively discussed in the academy, although the exact timing is unknown.  But part of the buildings, in particular, the physical training faculty building have already been set aside.”

Argumenty.ru reminds that the final decision on moving the Navy Main Staff to St. Petersburg was made not long ago, and ‘military experts’ put the cost of that move at 20-25 billion rubles.

This is kind of interesting.  That’s a lot of influence to attribute to the new guy in the job, particularly a job several ‘comrade doctor generals’ have not been able to hold onto for long in recent history.  Moreover, there are a lot of military hospitals and clinics in Moscow to serve the real capital’s large military and ex-military population.  If GVMU moves, they will be somewhat illogically separated from their headquarters element.

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Posted in Serdyukov's Reforms

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