Russian Military Officials, Press Voice Concerns About New Defence Minister

Text of report by Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on 5 April

[Part two of Viktor Barents feature: "Minister Who Does Not like to Be Conspicuous. Russian Military Department Head Anatoliy Serdyukov Decides To Take Further Training at General Staff Academy"; Part one was published in edition for 4 April]

Girls from reception

Like his predecessor, Serdyukov arrives at the Ministry at 0850- 0900. A State Automobile Inspectorate car travels in front of his black BMW (he also has a car with blue license plates and flashing lights – all this was inherited from Ivanov, but the driver is new) from his house to Znamenka Street (this is prescribed by virtue of his status). He is “tailed” by a Volga carrying his personal bodyguard and two communications officers, between whom on the back seat stands a weighty black case with the white tip of a satellite antenna sticking out of it. This is the “nuclear briefcase.” Serdyukov has already received all the instructions on how to use it if necessary. The bodyguards (Federal Protection Service officers) are also new – Ivanov took the previous ones with him.

The BMW enters the internal courtyard of the Ministry of Defence and drives up to the awning – the name given to the door with a small canopy over it that leads to the minister’s personal elevator. Accompanied by his bodyguard, he goes up to the fifth floor, where he has a spacious office with a ceiling as high as a church.

The first to come in to report data from the Central Command Point is usually Lieutenant-General Andrey Kazakov, the minister’s deputy chief of staff (previously these duties were usually performed by Chief of Staff General Andrey Chobotov, but he is currently quietly packing his bags – he is awaiting a transfer to Ivanov’s staff). Kazakov is a highly experienced official with long experience of working at the Defence Ministry. After their very first conversation he won Serdyukov over with his in-depth knowledge of matters and has now become almost the minister’s shadow – he goes on all visits to the various headquarters.

But recently the minister issued an order that shocked many people: Instead of officers, severe-looking women now staff Serdyukov’s front office (it is still known as the anteroom). They were transferred from the Federal Tax Service. There has never been anything like it at the Defence Ministry. The point is that the duty person running the front office for the main army chief is not only responsible for telephone calls and tells the minister on his internal line about who is eager to get in to see him, but is also party to state secrets. Generals sometimes leave documents for the minister on the duty person’s desk – including documents marked secret. Sometimes the duty person is told super-confidential news by commanders (because a person has to say why he is eager to get through – for example, a nuclear reactor has blown up on a submarine or a strategic bomber has dropped something out of the sky).

The word is that the counterintelligence officer in charge of the Ministry’s central apparatus almost had a heart attack when he learned that women had been given the right to “handle” confidential strategic information. And although they have a special pass (permission to have access to secret information) they were fearful of asking for it. The minister blew his top.

There was confusion with the minister himself too. Officials did not manage to draw up in time even the documents that allow him to have access to information of special importance.

In such cases several months is spent “sifting through” the ancestry of even ordinary officers for up to 10 generations back. But we are talking about a minister here! The problem was rapidly resolved. Authorization had to be requested from the government and even, they say, the Kremlin. So strictly speaking even the “nuclear suitcase” has formally belonged to Serdyukov for only a couple of weeks. And officials with a secrecy clearance also had to grit their teeth more than once when the minister had to be presented with documents containing, for example, information about the operations of the Main Intelligence Directorate or the size and state of our nuclear arsenals. Now, my interlocutors assured me, “all the prescribed procedures have been completed, and all the problems have been eliminated….”

Vegetarian menu

The minister spent his first three weeks getting to know the top personnel at the Ministry of Defence and the General Staff. Generals and colonels would come in to see Serdyukov as if they were walking to the gallows. When presenting their report, some of them all would have shaking voices, like a frightened student in a state examination. Sometimes in mid-report Serdyukov might say in a paternally warm voice: “Would you like tea or coffee?” Some people lost it to such an extent that they did not know how to respond. They have still not gotten used to it. During the first few days Serdyukov would speak most often with Ivanov on the Kremlin line – Sergey Borisovich is like a superior, comrade, and supervisor to him. After all he had promised in Putin’s presence to introduce his colleague to the post.

Between approximately 1300 and 1400 Serdyukov has lunch. Behind his office there is a relaxation room where a young waiter smartly dressed in a black suit and white shirt brings a nickel-plated trolley carrying crockery from the special buffet. And lays the table. The minister has a completely vegetarian menu – everyone is trying to guess whether he is fasting for Lent or trying to lose weight. Close associates of the minister have noted that Anatoliy Eduardovich rarely eats alone – he invites one of the generals. But tax officials are frequent visitors too.

Once Chief of General Staff Baluyevskiy was seen having a friendly meal. Incidentally, it was he who spent hours bringing the minister up to speed after Serdyukov was appointed. And soon after this there was talk going around the General Staff that Serdyukov had told Baluyevskiy: You will continue to handle operational command and control of the troops and I will not interfere in your “parish.” I will handle administrative and policy issues, money, and supplies. Many people on the General Staff were pleased to hear that because any confrontation is wearing on people’s nerves.

But does Serdyukov understand that even his enormous tax experience is not enough to be minister of defence? Because he needs to control not only money but also the Armed Forces. How much nonsensical criticism has already been levelled at him! Clearly this got to the minister. And he decided to take an unprecedented step – he has asked to have military training courses organized for him, as for a General Staff Academy student. This has never happened before in the history of the Defence Ministry. Serdyukov will be taught by the best doctors of sciences and professors. And the system of instruction chosen is as follows: The minister will attend some lectures at the Academy and some at the Ministry. Possibly in his office. Without taking time off work. After all he needs not only to study but also to run the Ministry.

“Press complex”

Serdyukov continues not to be very available to the press. He virtually had to be talked into speaking on TV on the eve of Defender of the Fatherland Day. He gave in only after one of the generals said: “Anatoliy Eduardovich, the Army and the supreme commander in chief might not understand you. After all, this is a sacred ritual!”

Officers in the Information Directorate are living in a state of anxiety. Their fate “is up in the air.” The former chief – General Sergey Rybakov – left with Sergey Ivanov. The media officers feel under pressure from the lack of clarity about the situation. It is not clear who is going to command them and who will be the minister’s press secretary. In six weeks Serdyukov has given only one (extremely formalistic) interview and has not held a single news conference yet.

This secretiveness is irritating the press, which is starting to adopt an unfriendly tone. The shortage of information is giving rise to rumours, misunderstandings, speculation, and even dangerous lies. If the minister stands aside from the media battlefield, he is highly vulnerable. Yet the country’s principal security official is not a leader about whom you are kept in the dark, some kind of prison “big shot” or Main Intelligence Directorate agent. He is constantly obliged to be “on view” because he is responsible for the lives of millions of people. And they want to understand his actions and decisions, his attitude towards the problems worrying the Army. And they are also interested in the purely everyday things – where specifically the minister served after college, who his wife is, how many children he has. Is it true that his hobbies are fishing and reading detective novels? An army does not understand a commander who plays “hide and seek” with it. And this is true not only of the serving military: Even those working on the same floor as the minister have accumulated a heap of questions to which they cannot obtain answers from their boss. Take the oft-mentioned Public Council under the Minister of Defence as an example. What is going to happen to it? It is no secret to anybody that it was created to benefit the former minister. Yet how much effort was expended and how many lances broken when the country’s most respected people were being selected for the Council from across Russia. Sixty or so “notables” headed by Nikita Mikhalkov were brought together in a single team and spread out among commissions. And with what results? Each commission is tinkering with its own problems and does not know how to solve them, because they need permanent contact with the top official at the Defence Ministry and not only with generals, who cannot decide anything for themselves without Serdyukov.

Serdyukov continues to be “secretive.” And the press is already scoffing at the top of its voice that the Public Council has become just another Defence Ministry “fig leaf.”

But that is not all.

Serdyukov’s very first visit outside Moscow ended in a major row: In St Petersburg the minister showed up at a Nakhimov college, where he identified the “culprit” for every military defect and dismissed the college chief – Rear Admiral Aleksandr Bukin – “for shortcomings in organizing the training and everyday life of students.” Behind this phrase lie “overturned” garbage bins swarming with crows, mould on the barracks walls, and water in a cellar. And this is grounds for removing a commanding officer with 30 years’ service? It would have been possible to “allow 24 hours for the shortcomings to be eliminated” and resolve the issue. It is likely that Serdyukov himself also realized that he had been too hasty, but only after he had returned to Moscow. But the news that the college principal had been removed had already hit the news wires. And the Army Press Service, in order to ease the fuss, had to immediately provide protection for the minister: There were instances, they said, but Bukin is not being dismissed, merely transferred to another post. The bewildered public still does not know what actually happened. And then another detective story surfaced: It was reported from Volgograd that Serdyukov had been appointed chairman of the Khimvolokno Open Joint-Stock Company Board of Directors. Two weeks have already past since this story appeared on the news agency wires. Tell me, would you be interested to know on what grounds the minister of defence has linked himself to the chemical industry? Personally, I would. But it is still a closely guarded secret. But here is the first result for you: Some media are already suggesting that Serdyukov’s directorship in Volgograd is a kind of “additional business.” And who is stopping journalists from thinking and writing precisely this? Nobody at all. Although there is also another view: Every minister tries to get into some leading economic structures in order to increase his prestige. It is a kind of “fashion” in the Kremlin and the government alike. But it would nevertheless be interesting to hear from A.E. [Serdyukov] himself an answer to the question: But why do you need all this? I hope that the minister of defence will take the trouble to answer it….

Mission for the future

There has already been a leak of information from the Defence Ministry that Serdyukov is soon to inspect the Far East Military District. And then to visit China. In general it has been the tradition for new Russian defence ministers to usually pay their first visits to the Far Abroad to the United States. This has been a kind of traditional “sign of recognition” of the partner’s authority. But it appears that Serdyukov has been given a different mission – to demonstrate that Russia’s military policy has not only western but also eastern dimensions. And in the summer Serdyukov will attend major Russian-Chinese exercises – preparations for these have already begun. And also Serdyukov has been appointed by presidential edict to be chairman of the Intergovernmental Commissions for Military-Technical Cooperation with China and India. Incidentally, Putin told Serdyukov that “Russia’s priority task in such cooperation must be to develop new forms of production sharing – the joint development and subsequent series production of arms both for our own needs and for export.” It is precisely this kind of production sharing that Serdyukov will be developing. He has several difficult issues with India and China to resolve. Since 2005 Russia has not even started implementing a major contract to supply the Chinese Air Force with 34 Il-78MD paratroop transport aircraft and 4 Il-78MK refueling aircraft. And that represents millions of dollars. Serdyukov has to unravel a difficult conundrum: Why is the Russian defence sector “faltering”?

People have already been whispering to him that a vicious struggle is in progress between firms, and some clans are fighting others. The minister will have to separate them.

And here too Delhi is unhappy about deliveries to China of Russian RD-93 aero-engines which are then exported to Pakistan – another unfriendly neighbour of India’s – along with FC-1 Super-7 fighters. Plus Delhi is pressing Moscow to conclude specific agreements on the development of a new transport plane and fifth- generation fighter, on which Sergey Ivanov reached preliminary agreement during President Putin’s visit to India in January. In general Serdyukov has plenty to do on both the domestic and the international “front.”

PERSONAL FILE

Anatoliy Eduardovich Serdyukov

He was born on 8 January 1962 in the Abinskiy Rayon village of Khomskiy in Krasnodar Kray.

He graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Soviet Trade in 1984 and from St Petersburg State University in 2001.

He is an economist and a lawyer by specialism.

From 1980 through 1984 he was a student at the Leningrad Institute of Soviet Trade.

From 1984 through 1985 he served in the Soviet Army.

From 1985 through 1991 he was a deputy department head and then a department head at the No 3 Lenmebeltorg [furniture] store in Leningrad.

From 1991 through 1993 he was deputy commercial director for Lenmebeltorg in Leningrad.

In 1993 he became deputy director of the Mebel-Market Joint- Stock Company in St Petersburg.

From 1993 through 1995 he was marketing director for the Mebel- Market Joint-Stock Company in St Petersburg.

From 1995 through 2000 he was general director of the Mebel- Market Joint-Stock Company in St Petersburg.

From 2000 through 2001 he was deputy leader of the Russian Federation Ministry of Taxes and Levies Inspectorate for Work with Major Taxpayers for the City of St Petersburg.

In 2001 he became deputy head of the Russian Federation Ministry of Taxes and Levies Administration for Work with Major Taxpayers for the City of St Petersburg.

From 2001 through 2004 he was head of the Russian Federation Ministry of Taxes and Levies Administration for the City of St Petersburg.

In 2004 he became Russian Federation deputy minister for taxes and levies.

In 2004 he was acting Russian Federation minister for taxes and levies.

On 27 July 2004 he was appointed head of the Federal Tax Service.

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