Russia and France have announced a deal to buy the French Mistral-class helicopter carrier. Is this a sign of a new path of the Russian armed forces? What does the rearmament concept look like? Chief editor of RussiaProfile.org Andrei Zolotov, Jr. talks to Alexander Golts, a prominent Russian military analyst and the deputy editor-in-chief of the news website ej.ru.
Good afternoon. Our guest today is Alexander Golts, a leading Russian military analyst and the deputy editor-in-chief of the Weekly Journal.
Russia has recently announced the deal to buy a French Mistral-class helicopter carrier. Is this an important achievement for the Russian armed forces? After all, it’s been a long time since Russia last bought foreign-made weapons.
This is an extremely important achievement. Indeed, Russia has not bought foreign weapons for a very long time, I think, not since the Second World War era’s Lend-lease program.
In my opinion, the Mistral purchase is, first, evidence of a serious conflict between the Russian Defense Ministry and the defense industry. This is the first time the military has said loud and clear, despite harsh criticism, that they will buy what they really need, not simply whatever the Russian industry can produce. This is a very important signal.
Second, which military equipment does the Defense Ministry need? The Mistral is a warship designed for a different conceptual approach to naval operations. In the past, the Russian Navy was focused on supporting the strategic nuclear forces, but its current tasks include landing operations and demonstration of naval might, including at a great distance from Russian shores, as well as other operations such as fighting pirates in the Gulf of Aden.
Is all that part of the rearmament concept? How has that concept been faring so far?
In my opinion, we are facing very serious problems with that concept. The biggest problem is that the armed forces are undergoing the most radical and the most painful reform of the last 100 years. However, no such reform is envisaged for the defense industry, which remains Soviet in structural terms.
What do you mean?
I mean that defense enterprises have been consolidated in state-controlled corporations, which are a mere mockery of the Soviet-era military industrial departments. As many as 25% of enterprises in these state corporations are facing bankruptcy, meaning that other companies have to dole out money to support them. This is an extremely ineffective business model. The biggest problem, the supply of component parts, remains unresolved. This is why the companies that are designed to assemble equipment also have to produce component parts, which in turn affects their production capacities.
Can a modernized Russian armed forces survive without modern weapons?
The question is what are modern weapons? One problem we have neglected for years, of supplying electronics to the armed forces, has now come to a head, especially concerning reconnaissance and communication equipment. Russia faces very serious problems in this department as its armed forces simply cannot operate without that kind of equipment.
It is said that, once modernized, the armed forces must be able to win a conflict within two weeks. Is that right?
Military modernization stipulates above all the involvement of conventional rather than nuclear forces in conflicts that are local, or at the most, regional in nature. And victory in such conflicts is usually achieved within days, if not hours.
As far as I know, you have been rather critical about the current developments in the Russian armed forces. But today you were quite optimistic about the ongoing military reform. Am I right?
There are many contradictory elements in this reform, but it should be said that the Defense Ministry is carrying out exactly the kind of reform that liberal analysts, including myself, have been advocating for the past 20 years.
Thank you.
