As the Soviet Union dissolved, efforts were made to keep the
Soviet Armed Forces as a single military structure for the new
Commonwealth of Independent States. The last
Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union, Marshal
Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, was appointed supreme commander of the CIS Armed Forces in December 1991. Among the numerous treaties signed by the former republics, in order to direct the transition period, was a temporary agreement on general purpose forces, signed in
Minsk on 14 February 1992. However, once it became clear that
Ukraine (and potentially the other republics) was determined to undermine the concept of joint general purpose forces and form their own armed forces, the new Russian government moved to form its own armed forces. Russian president
Boris Yeltsin signed a
decree forming the Russian Ministry of Defence on 7 May 1992, establishing the Russian Ground Forces along with the other branches of the
Russian Armed Forces. At the same time, the General Staff was in the process of withdrawing tens of thousands of personnel from the
Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, the
Northern Group of Forces in Poland, the
Central Group of Forces in Czechoslovakia, the
Southern Group of Forces in Hungary, and from Mongolia. Thirty-seven
Soviet Ground Forces divisions had to be withdrawn from the four groups of forces and the Baltic States, and four military districts—totaling 57 divisions—were handed over to Belarus and Ukraine. Some idea of the scale of the withdrawal can be gained from the
division list. For the dissolving Soviet Ground Forces, the withdrawal from the former
Warsaw Pact states and the Baltic states was an extremely demanding, expensive, and debilitating process. As the military districts that remained in Russia after the collapse of the Union consisted mostly of the mobile
cadre formations, the Ground Forces were, to a large extent, created by relocating the formerly full-strength formations from Eastern Europe to under-resourced districts. However, the facilities in those districts were inadequate to house the flood of personnel and equipment returning from abroad, and many units "were unloaded from the rail wagons into empty fields." The need for destruction and transfer of large amounts of weaponry under the
Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe also necessitated great adjustments.
Post-Soviet reform plans The
Ministry of Defence newspaper
Krasnaya Zvezda published a reform plan on 21 July 1992. Later one commentator said it was "hastily" put together by the General Staff "to satisfy the public demand for radical changes." The
General Staff, from that point, became a bastion of conservatism, causing a build-up of troubles that later became critical. The reform plan advocated a change from an Army-Division-Regiment structure to a Corps-Brigade arrangement. The new structures were to be more capable in a situation with no front line, and more capable of independent action at all levels. Cutting out a level of command, omitting two out of three higher echelons between the theatre headquarters and the fighting battalions, would produce economies, increase flexibility, and simplify command-and-control arrangements. went as far as to say that the Armed Forces were "an institution increasingly defined by the high levels of military criminality and corruption embedded within it at every level." The FMSO noted that crime levels had always grown with social turbulence, such as the trauma Russia was passing through. The author identified four major types among the raft of criminality prevalent within the forces—weapons trafficking and the arms trade; business and commercial ventures; military crime beyond Russia's borders; and contract murder. Weapons disappearances began during the dissolution of the Union and has continued. Within units "rations are sold while soldiers grow hungry ... [while] fuel, spare parts, and equipment can be bought." Meanwhile,
voyemkomats take bribes to arrange avoidance of service, or a more comfortable posting. Beyond the Russian frontier, drugs were smuggled across the
Tajik border—supposedly being patrolled by Russian guards—by military aircraft, and a Russian senior officer, General Major Alexander Perelyakin, had been dismissed from his post with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Hercegovina (
UNPROFOR), following continued complaints of smuggling, profiteering, and corruption. In terms of contract killings, beyond the Kholodov case, there have been widespread rumours that GRU
Spetsnaz personnel have been moonlighting as
mafiya hitmen. Abuse of personnel, sending soldiers to work outside units—a long-standing tradition which could see conscripts doing things ranging from being large scale manpower supply for commercial businesses to being officers' families' servants—is now banned by Sergei Ivanov's Order 428 of October 2005. What is more, the order is being enforced, with several prosecutions recorded. Compounding this problem was also a rise in "extremist" crimes in the ground forces, with "
servicemen from different ethnic groups or regions trying to enforce their own rules and order in their units", according to the Prosecutor General. Fridinsky also lambasted the military investigations department for their alleged lack of efficiency in investigative matters, with only one in six criminal cases being revealed. Military commanders were also accused of concealing crimes committed against servicemen from military officials. A major corruption scandal also occurred at the elite
Lipetsk pilot training center, where the deputy commander, the chief of staff and other officers allegedly extorted 3 million roubles of premium pay from other officers since the beginning of 2010. The Tambov military garrison prosecutor confirmed that charges have been lodged against those involved. The affair came to light after a junior officer wrote about the extortion in his personal blog. Sergey Fridinskiy, the Main Military Prosecutor acknowledged that extortion in the distribution of supplementary pay in army units is common, and that "criminal cases on the facts of extortion are being investigated in practically every district and fleet." In August 2012, Prosecutor General Fridinsky again reported a rise in crime, with murders rising more than half, bribery cases doubling, and drug trafficking rising by 25% in the first six months of 2012 as compared to the same period in the previous year. Following the release of these statistics, the
Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia denounced the conditions in the Armed Forces as a "crime against humanity". In July 2013, the
Prosecutor General of Russia's office revealed that corruption in the same year had grown 5.5 times as compared to the previous year, costing the Russian government 4.4 billion rubles (US$130 million). It was also revealed that total number of registered crimes in the Russian armed forces had declined in the same period, although one in five crimes registered were corruption-related. "In 2019, Chief Military Prosecutor Valery Petrov reported that some $110 million had been lost due to corruption in the military departments and the number was on the uptick."
Involvement in Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 The Russian Ground Forces reluctantly became involved in the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993 after President Yeltsin issued an
unconstitutional decree dissolving the Russian Parliament, following its resistance to Yeltsin's consolidation of power and his neo-liberal reforms. A group of deputies, including Vice President
Alexander Rutskoi, barricaded themselves inside the parliament building. While giving public support to the president, the Armed Forces, led by General Grachev, tried to remain neutral, following the wishes of the officer corps. The military leadership were unsure of both the rightness of Yeltsin's cause and the reliability of their forces, and had to be convinced at length by Yeltsin to attack the parliament. When the attack was finally mounted, forces from five different divisions around Moscow were used, and the personnel involved were mostly officers and senior
non-commissioned officers. There were also indications that some formations deployed into Moscow only under protest. The continuation of Chechen independence was seen as reducing Moscow's authority; Chechnya became perceived as a haven for criminals, and a hard-line group within the Kremlin began advocating war. A Security Council meeting was held 29 November 1994, where Yeltsin ordered the Chechens to disarm, or else Moscow would restore order. Defence Minister
Pavel Grachev assured Yeltsin that he would "take Grozny with one airborne assault regiment in two hours." The operation began on 11 December 1994 and, by 31 December, Russian forces were entering
Grozny, the Chechen capital. The 131st Motor Rifle Brigade was ordered to make a swift push for the centre of the city, but was then virtually destroyed in Chechen ambushes. After finally seizing Grozny amid fierce resistance, Russian troops moved on to other Chechen strongholds. When Chechen militants took hostages in the
Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in Stavropol Kray in June 1995, peace looked possible for a time, but the fighting continued. Following this incident, the separatists were referred to as
insurgents or
terrorists within Russia. Dzhokar Dudayev was assassinated in a Russian
airstrike on 21 April 1996, and that summer, a Chechen attack
retook Grozny.
Alexander Lebed, then Secretary of the Security Council, began talks with the Chechen rebel leader
Aslan Maskhadov in August 1996 and signed an agreement on 22/23 August; by the end of that month, the fighting ended. The formal ceasefire was signed in the
Dagestani town of
Khasavyurt on 31 August 1996, stipulating that a formal agreement on relations between the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian federal government need not be signed until late 2001. Writing some years later,
Dmitri Trenin and Aleksei Malashenko described the Russian military's performance in Chechniya as "grossly deficient at all levels, from commander-in-chief to the drafted private." The Ground Forces' performance in the First Chechen War has been assessed by a British academic as "appallingly bad". Writing six years later, Michael Orr said "one of the root causes of the Russian failure in 1994–96 was their inability to raise and deploy a properly trained military force." Then Lieutenant Colonel
Mark Hertling of the U.S. Army had the chance to visit the Ground Forces in 1994: The Russian barracks were spartan, with twenty beds lined up in a large room similar to what the U.S. Army had during World War II. The food in their mess halls was terrible. The Russian "training and exercises" we observed were not opportunities to improve capabilities or skills, but rote demonstrations, with little opportunity for maneuver or imagination. The military college classroom where a group of middle- and senior-ranking officers conducted a regimental map exercise was rudimentary, with young soldiers manning radio-telephones relaying orders to imaginary units in some imaginary field location. On the motor pool visit, I was able to crawl into a T-80 tank—it was cramped, dirty, and in poor repair—and even fire a few rounds in a very primitive simulator. In June 1999 Russian forces, though not the Ground Forces, were involved in a confrontation with NATO. Parts of the
1st Separate Airborne Brigade of the
Russian Airborne Forces raced to seize control of
Pristina Airport in what became
Kosovo, leading to the
Incident at Pristina airport.
Second Chechen War The Second Chechen War began in August 1999 after Chechen militias
invaded neighboring
Dagestan, followed quickly in early September by a
series of four terrorist bombings across Russia. This prompted Russian military action against the alleged Chechen culprits. In the first Chechen war, the Russians primarily laid waste to an area with artillery and airstrikes before advancing the land forces. Improvements were made in the Ground Forces between 1996 and 1999; when the Second Chechen War started, instead of hastily assembled "composite regiments" dispatched with little or no training, whose members had never seen service together, formations were brought up to strength with replacements, put through preparatory training, and then dispatched. Combat performance improved accordingly, and large-scale opposition was crippled. Most of the prominent past Chechen separatist leaders had died or been killed, including former president
Aslan Maskhadov and leading
warlord and terrorist attack mastermind
Shamil Basayev. However, small-scale conflict continued to drag on; as of November 2007, it had spread across other parts of the
Russian Caucasus. It was a divisive struggle, with at least one senior military officer dismissed for being unresponsive to government commands: General Colonel
Gennady Troshev was dismissed in 2002 for refusing to move from command of the
North Caucasus Military District to command of the less important Siberian Military District. The Second Chechen War was officially declared ended on 16 April 2009.
Reforms Under Sergeyev When
Igor Sergeyev arrived as Minister of Defence in 1997, he initiated what were seen as real reforms under very difficult conditions. The number of military educational establishments, virtually unchanged since 1991, was reduced, and the amalgamation of the Siberian and Trans-Baikal Military Districts was ordered. A larger number of army divisions were given "constant readiness" status, which was supposed to bring them up to 80 percent manning and 100 percent equipment holdings. Sergeyev announced in August 1998 that there would be six divisions and four brigades on 24-hour alert by the end of that year. Three levels of forces were announced; constant readiness, low-level, and strategic reserves. However, personnel quality—even in these favored units—continued to be a problem. Lack of fuel for training and a shortage of well-trained junior officers hampered combat effectiveness. However, concentrating on the interests of his old service, the
Strategic Rocket Forces, Sergeyev directed the disbanding of the Ground Forces headquarters itself in December 1997. The disbandment was a "military nonsense", in Orr's words, "justifiable only in terms of internal politics within the Ministry of Defence". The Ground Forces' prestige declined as a result, as the headquarters disbandment implied—at least in theory—that the Ground Forces no longer ranked equally with the Air Force and Navy.
Under Vladimir Putin Under President
Vladimir Putin, more funds were committed, the Ground Forces Headquarters was reestablished, and some progress on professionalisation occurred. Plans called for reducing mandatory service to 18 months in 2007, and to one year by 2008, but a mixed Ground Force, of both contract soldiers and conscripts, would remain. (As of 2009, the length of conscript service was 12 months.) Funding increases began in 1999. After some recovery of the economy and the associated rise in income, especially from oil, "..officially reported defence spending [rose] in nominal terms at least, for the first time since the formation of the Russian Federation". The budget rose from 141 billion rubles in 2000 to 219 billion rubles in 2001. Increased funding has been spread across the whole budget, with personnel spending being matched by greater procurement and
research and development funding. However, in 2004, Alexander Goltz said that, given the insistence of the hierarchy on trying to force contract soldiers into the old conscript pattern, there is little hope of a fundamental strengthening of the Ground Forces. He further elaborated that they are expected to remain, to some extent, a military liability and "Russia's most urgent social problem" for some time to come. Goltz summed up by saying: "All of this means that the Russian armed forces are not ready to defend the country and that, at the same time, they are also dangerous for Russia. Top military personnel demonstrate neither the will nor the ability to effect fundamental changes." In May 2007, it was announced that enlisted pay would rise to 65,000 roubles (US$2,750) per month, and the pay of officers on combat duty in rapid response units would rise to 100,000–150,000 roubles (US$4,230–$6,355) per month. However, while the move to one year conscript service would disrupt
dedovshchina, it is unlikely that bullying will disappear altogether without significant societal change. Other assessments from the same source point out that the Russian Armed Forces faced major disruption in 2008, as demographic change hindered plans to reduce the term of conscription from two years to one.
Under Serdyukov A major reorganisation of the force began in 2007 by the Minister for Defence
Anatoliy Serdyukov, with the aim of converting all divisions into brigades, and cutting surplus officers and establishments. In a statement on 4 September 2009, RGF
Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Boldyrev said that half of the Russian land forces were reformed by 1 June and that 85 brigades of constant combat preparedness had already been created. Among them are the combined-arms brigade, missile brigades, assault brigades and electronic warfare brigades. During General
Mark Hertling's term as Commander,
United States Army Europe in 2011–2012, he visited Russia at the invitation of the Commander of the Ground Forces, "Colonel-General (corresponding to an American lieutenant general)
Aleksandr Streitsov. ..[A]t preliminary meetings" with the
Embassy of the United States, Moscow, the U.S. Defence Attache told Hertling that the Ground Forces "while still substantive in quantity, continued to decline in capability and quality. My subsequent visits to the schools and units [Colonel General] Streitsov chose reinforced these conclusions. The classroom discussions were sophomoric, and the units in training were going through the motions of their scripts with no true training value or combined arms interaction—infantry, armor, artillery, air, and resupply all trained separately."
Under Shoygu After
Sergey Shoygu took over the role of
Ministry of Defence, the reforms
Serdyukov had implemented were reversed. He also aimed to restore trust with senior officers as well as the
Ministry of Defence in the wake of the intense resentment Serduykov's reforms had generated. He did this a number of ways but one of the ways was integrating himself by wearing a
military uniform. Shoygu ordered 750 military exercises, such as
Vostok 2018. The exercises also seemed to have helped validate the general direction of reform. The effect of this readiness was seen during
Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. Since
Anatoliy Serdyukov had already completed the unpopular reforms (military downsizing and reorganization), it was relatively easy for Shoygu to be conciliatory with the officer corps and
Ministry of Defence. Rearmament has been an important goal of reform, with the goal of 70% modernization by 2020. From 1998 to 2001, the Ground Forces received almost no new equipment. Sergey Shoygu took a less confrontational approach with the
defence industry. By showing better flexibility on terms and pricing, the awarding of new contracts for the upcoming period was much better. Shoygu promised that future contracts would be awarded primarily to domestic firms. While easing tensions, these concessions also weakened incentives for companies to improve performance. Shoygu also focused on forming
battalion tactical groups (BTGs) as the permanent readiness component of the Russian army, rather than brigade-sized formations. According to sources quoted by the Russian
Interfax agency, this was due to a lack of the manpower needed for permanent-readiness brigades. BTGs made up the preponderance of units deployed by Russia in the
war in Donbas. By August 2021 Shoygu claimed that the Russian army had around 170 BTGs.
Russo-Ukrainian War Russia conducted a military buildup on the Ukrainian border starting in late 2021. By mid February 2022, elements of the
29th,
35th and
36th Combined Arms Armies (CAAs) were deployed to
Belarus, supported by additional S-400 systems, a squadron of Su-25 and a squadron of Su-35; additional S-400 systems and four Su-30 fighters were deployed to the country for joint use with Belarus. Russia also had the 20th and 8th CAAs and the 22nd AC regularly deployed near the Ukrainian border, while elements of 41st CAA were deployed to
Yelnya, elements of 1st TA and 6th CAA were deployed to
Voronezh and elements of the 49th and the 58th CAA were deployed to
Crimea. In all, Russia deployed some 150,000 soldiers around Ukraine during this time, in preparation for the eventual Russian invasion. On 11 February, the US and western nations communicated that Putin had decided to invade Ukraine, and on 12 February, the US and Russian embassies in Kyiv started to evacuate personnel. On 24 February, Russian troops began
invading Ukraine. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian tank losses were reported as a consequence of the Ukrainian use of sophisticated anti-tank weapons and a lack of air support. The Russian army has been described by Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at
St Andrews University as "a boxer who has a great right hook and a glass jaw." Quoting
Napoleon "In war, moral power is to physical as three parts out of four." Retired US four-star general
Curtis Scaparrotti has blamed confusion and poor morale amongst Russian soldiers over their mission as to their poor performance. Due to the fighting in Ukraine the
2022 Moscow Victory Day Parade was to be reduced by some 35%, purely in ground combat vehicles or systems. The parade on 9 May 2022, according to the official guide, would feature only 25 combat systems and 131 ground combat vehicles, compared to 2021 where it featured 198 vehicles and 35 combat systems. In particular there was a shortage of display ready T-80 tanks and Russia used older equipment to make up numbers. An example is usage of tank transporters in lieu of actual tanks. In 2023 the trend accelerated; only a single World War II-vintage tank was at the parade. As of 6 May,
at least 12 generals have been killed in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence. This "suggests that the generals need to be at the front lines to ensure that their troops are conducting the battle plan in the way that they want. But that also suggests a lack of confidence in their troops if they need to be that far forward with that many senior folks." Ukraine further claims that some 317 officers have been killed, a third of whom are senior command staff. In a tweet the
UK MoD said that the Russian officer corps was suffering "devastating losses" particularly in the junior to mid officer ranks. United States officials estimated that Russian forces had lost 150,000+ killed and wounded from 24 February 2022 – 21 January 2023. In stark contrast, the Russian Defence Minister said that only 5,937 personnel from the entire Russian Armed Forces had been killed from 24 February – 21 September 2022, the first seven months of fighting. Reported figures from Donetsk and Luhansk would add some 22,000 to this figure. After 14 months of fighting, Russian forces are estimated to have lost over 2,000 tanks, struggling to replace its tank losses due to sanctions by Europe and the United States. This has caused Russia to compensate by instead of using imported goods, using locally made equipment deemed less efficient, and reactivating tanks from the 1950s and 1960s. On 14 February 2023, British defence secretary
Ben Wallace told the BBC that 97% of the Russian ground forces were now committed to the war in Ukraine. Three months afterwards, Russia did not display a single modern tank for the
2023 Moscow Victory Day Parade. In February 2023, launching the 2023 Military Balance, the IISS estimated Ground Forces numbers had climbed to an estimated 550,000, including an estimated 100,000 conscripts and up to 300,000 mobilized personnel. This number should be set against the Central Intelligence Agency's estimate of 300,000 active duty before February 2022. In October 2023, it was reported that there was a growth of mutinies among Russian troops due to large amount of losses in offensives around
Avdiivka with a lack of artillery, food, water and poor command also being reported.
Involvement in Crimea before 2022 ″Little green men″, a phrase used by both Russian and Ukrainian reporters in 2014, referred to armed men in
Crimea resembling the Russian military. They were described as using the same weapons, using Russian license plates for their trucks, and speaking in Russian accents. Despite repeated denials, Russia later confirmed its military presence in Crimea, with Putin giving contradictory statements during a 2018 interview with journalist
Armin Wolf, claiming that ″the Russian Army was always there″. == Structure ==