IN THIS ISSUE

* Russian armed forces receive network-centric warfare training and assets
* Moscow suddenly outlaws Caucasus Emirate - two years after its creation
* Crimean separatists buoyed by the election of Yanukovych
** Visit the Jamestown blog on Russia and Eurasia (http://www.jamestown.org/blog):
- Ukraine: Can Yanukovych Force Tymoshenko Out?

Russian Military Quietly Adopts Network-Centric Warfare

Roger McDermott

Controversy returned to the Russian Chief of the General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister, Army-General Nikolai Makarov, following an interview on February 25, during which he seemed to signal a policy reversal on the issue of further developing contract personnel numbers (Kommersant, Russia Today, Interfax, February 25). Makarov pointedly asserted, “We are not going to switch to contract service. Too many mistakes have been made, while the task of building a professional army has not been fulfilled. So the decision was made that conscript service will remain in the armed forces,” adding that, “We are increasing conscription and cutting down the contract component. We have realized that contract servicemen must be trained using new methods.” Sensationalist interpretations of his comments were offered, among others, by Gazeta.ru, which claimed that he was in effect “tearing up contracts” (www.gazeta.ru, February 26). Moreover, some critics suggested that his plans contradicted part of the new military doctrine signed by President Dimity Medvedev on February 5.

Nevertheless, Makarov was actually simply highlighting that for the time being the possibility of using kontraktniki as the basis of the armed forces is unrealistic. This reflects the awareness that the future backbone of the line units will be the new professional non-commissioned officers (NCO’s), trained in courses lasting two years and ten months at Ryazan, and these will not serve in units in any meaningful numbers until 2013-2015 at the earliest. Equally, had Makarov fallen into the trap of advocating professionalizing the force structure and abandoning conscription, his critics would have denounced him for promoting unaffordable plans.

Yet, curiously, General Makarov explained earlier that the armed forces are making an even more remarkable transition. In the context of the continued reform of the system of military education, he said that current military graduates have not been instructed on the principles of network-centric warfare. He noted that this was being urgently corrected, despite no declaratory element in the reform agenda clearly referring to this aim. Makarov said that the General Staff Academy is currently running courses for brigade commanders in which the principles of network-centric warfare are being taught. This will be expanded, in turn, to include all serving officers (www.gazeta.ru, February 22).

The delayed plan to relocate the Navy headquarters from Moscow to St. Petersburg was also rationalized in precisely these terms. That initiative partly reflected the capital being overburdened by army and naval organizations. However, it also related to the adoption of network-centric capabilities. Introducing a unified telecommunications network that connects disparate staffs and intelligence assets, as well as the means of attack, will permit command centers to be located thousands of kilometers from the General Staff and military units. Makarov specified the new tactical level Sozvezdiye (Constellation) command and control system; undergoing its final development work, which will be introduced within the ground forces in November 2010 (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, February 22).

Despite, Makarov seeming to contradict the military doctrine on the system of manning and apparently advocating lowering the numbers of contract personnel in favor of conscripts, his remarks in relation to network-centric warfare are entirely consistent with it. It is important to highlight that when the current military reform was first announced by President Medvedev in September 2008, and outlined by Defense Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov on October 14, 2008, it contained no reference to the intention of adopting network-centric capabilities. It is likely that this silence was based on the far-reaching political implications linked to pursuing such an approach. However, while the doctrine recognizes the trend toward this type of warfare among foreign militaries, in the part that specifies the future priorities of re-equipping the Russian armed forces, the intention is made abundantly clear:

“to create basic information management systems and integrate them with the systems for command and control of weapons and the automation systems of command and control organs at the strategic, operational-strategic, operational, operational-tactical, and tactical levels” (www.kremlin.ru, February 5).

Such ambitious developments are not without its skeptics and critics. Viktor Litovkin, for instance, writing recently in Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, noted that Russian communications systems were a major weakness in the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008. Although he appeared to underestimate how this featured in the operational “lessons learned” from the campaign, as well as how this influenced subsequent thinking and planning in the defense ministry and the General Staff, he rightly identified the recurrence of those problems during operational-strategic exercises staged in 2009. Yet, he did take seriously the comments by General Makarov on introducing network-centric warfare capabilities (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, February 22).

Significantly, this is not simply about providing an outward display of progress toward modernization, since Makarov’s remarks confirm shifts in the priorities of officer training. The architects of the current reform identified that during periods of reform in Russian history, despite the problems existing within society, ways were found to overcome such challenges: particularly during the reforms of Peter the Great that succeeded in setting a new standard in the imperial Russian army despite this occurring within an agrarian society with a small population compared to the other great powers. This was achieved by drawing on foreign experience and adapting it to the Russian setting: Colonel (retired) Vitaliy Shlykov recently highlighted that Serdyukov has followed such an approach, and in doing so he has overcome the traditional Russian reluctance to utilize foreign experience (Voyenno Promyshlennyy Kuryer, February 19).

This explains how the reforms to date have made such progress, though these have largely entailed administrative tasks as the force structure has made the transition to permanent readiness brigades. Yet, the long-term challenges, especially linked to revolutionizing its approach toward warfare and training a new generation of officers and NCO’s to support this strategy, will also depend on the ability of the defense ministry and General Staff to absorb and use foreign experience. At a political level, by adopting network-centric warfare capabilities, Russia is massively widening the already existing gap between its own conventional power and that of its former Soviet neighbors. If it succeeds, domestic political aspirations to elongate the durability of Russian power within the former Soviet Union will appear more realistic.

Is the Kremlin Announcement a new Drive to Suppress Government Critics?

Valery Dzutsev

On February 27, President Dmitry Medvedev made a surprise trip to the North Caucasus, visiting Nalchik in Kabardino-Balkaria and Cherkessk in the neighboring republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia. The Russian president reiterated that the government remains concerned about the situation in the North Caucasus. Recognizing the growing number of insurgents in the region, Medvedev stated in Kabardino-Balkaria that the extremist forces “have spread like tumors.” In Karachaevo-Cherkessia he called for a steady fight against the extremists, without “hysteria” (RIA Novosti, February 27). President Medvedev has now visited all of the North Caucasian republics with the exception of small and relatively peaceful Adygea.

Earlier this month, the Russian Supreme Court reminded the public about the seriousness of destabilization in the North Caucasus when it took an unexpected step of proclaiming the Caucasus Emirate a terrorist organization and officially outlawed it on February 8. As Russian law provides for those accused of terrorism to appeal the decision, it came into force only on February 25 (www.kavkaz-uzel.ru, February 26).

A number of observers were initially puzzled by the decision of the Russian Supreme Court, because the Caucasus Emirate’s creation was announced by the North Caucasus insurgents’ leader, Doku Umarov, in October 2007. Even the principal coordinator of the fight with the insurgents in Chechnya, Adam Delimkhanov, could not help saying: “It is strange that Umarov’s organization [the Caucasus Emirate] has been recognized as terrorist only now. As if they were not terrorists before” (Kommersant, February 9). Avraam Shmulevich, a commentator on the North Caucasus, ridiculed the court’s decision as it estimated the number of insurgents “from 50 to 1,500.” He wrote: “If, because of 50 or even 1,500 bandits, huge territories, whole federal districts are redrawn [a reference to the recent creation of the North Caucasus Federal District], these [militants] are cyborg-terminators, each of whom is worth 10,000 federal soldiers” (www.apn.ru, February 11).

However, on February 25, the Russian Prosecutor General’s office published a short notice about outlawing the Emirate that might shed some light on the reasons for the Supreme Court’s decision. According to the prosecutors, recognizing the organization as terrorist allows the law enforcement agencies to prosecute not only the active militants who launch the attacks, but also terrorists’ accomplices and ideologues, who act in support of the organization, including providing “informational support.” The announcement by the Prosecutor General’s Office promised that supporters of the Caucasus Emirate would be subject to anti-extremism legislation (www.genproc.gov.ru, February 25).

Determining who is a supporter of extremism can be subject to very wide-ranging interpretations in Russia. Dagestani independent journalists (the freest in the North Caucasus) were recently targeted by the authorities for alleged support of the Islamic insurgency after they criticized the harsh and unlawful practices of the security services in the republic. So the official designation of the Caucasus Emirate as a terrorist organization might legalize prosecutors’ attempts to file criminal cases against virtually any critic of the government’s malpractices in the North Caucasus.

Since the time of its conception in 2007, the Caucasus Emirate has encountered significant resistance and suspicion from the long-time proponents of Chechnya’s independence. Most notably Akhmed Zakaev, the prominent member of Aslan Maskhadov’s government in exile, repeatedly accused Russian security services of being behind this project. According to Zakaev, the Federal Security Service (FSB) staged the Caucasus Emirate to discredit the Chechen national liberation movement and connect it to Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda in order to portray Russia as a victim of the jihadists and align it with Western countries in their war on terror (Kommersant-Vlast, October 26, 2009).

The Kavkaz Center website, the main informational resource of the Caucasus Emirate, denounced Zakaev on several occasions, accusing him of being an “FSB agent.”

While it is hard to be certain about the origins of the Caucasus Emirate since it operates illegally and has no easily accessible spokesperson, some observations can be made by drawing on historical and contemporary events and facts. First, the number of attacks in the North Caucasus has clearly increased since 2007, and 2009 was by far the most deadly year in the past several years. According to the Human Rights and Security Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, there were over 1,100 incidents of violence in 2009 that resulted in more than 900 fatalities, in comparison to 795 incidents and 586 fatalities in 2008 (www.csis.org/program/north-caucasus, January 14).

Second, attempts to bring the different peoples of the ethnically diverse North Caucasus under a single command and utilizing Islamic ideology to fight the Russian invaders have been made since the extension of the Russian empire into the region. There is no reason to believe that historical figures like Shamil and the Caucasus Imamate that he headed in nineteenth century did not have an influence on the current generation of dissenters or even perhaps inspire them.

Third, it is a proven fact that the insurgency phenomenon spread to the other North Caucasian republics and for some time has not been confined within the boundaries of Chechnya. So as the underground militancy grew outside Chechnya, at a certain point Doku Umarov must have been pressed to give recognition to those non-Chechen centers of the rebellion. Announcing a new umbrella organization like the Caucasus Emirate to give credit to all, not just to the Chechen fighters, represented the logical step of including the various ethnic rebel groups in the North Caucasus.

Moscow, in its turn, has been struggling to adjust its policies to the changing environment in the region. The installation of Ramzan Kadyrov-like governments in each of the republics may have been an attractive option for some in Moscow, as it is the only strategy that has yielded some results so far. But each republic in the region has a unique composition of political forces, ethnic make-up and historical background, meaning that Kadyrov’s example can hardly be repeated elsewhere in the region.

Yanukovych’s Election Opens Up Crimean Separatist Threat

Taras Kuzio

Viktor Yanukovych’s inauguration as Ukrainian president on February 25 forced him to face the fact that the Party of Regions that he leads, has re-opened the Pandora’s Box of Crimean separatism. National Institute of Strategic Studies analyst Petro Burkovsky asked “Will President Yanukovych open up the path to the separation of the Crimea?” in Ukrayinska Pravda before the second round of voting (Ukrayinska Pravda, January 26).

A similar warning was published in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (February 19): “The Crimea could become a major problem for the new Ukrainian president.” The author pointed to the first example of this pending threat to Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The Crimean parliament voted to change its name from Crimean Supreme Rada (Ukrainian for Council) to Soviet (the Russian equivalent). “The Crimean deputies had de facto voted for the move to a Russian name of the parliament of the autonomous (republic) by infringing the Ukrainian constitution” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 19). The central authorities, in the middle of a transfer of power, did not react to this illegal move in Crimea.

The election of Yanukovych is seen in the Crimea as “opening up new possibilities for distancing the peninsula from the center” (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 19). Russian nationalists believe Yanukovych’s election campaign rhetoric advocated policies that make him appear more pro-Russian than Leonid Kuchma. These included promoting a gas consortium with Russia and joining the CIS Single Economic Space Customs Union, opposition to close cooperation with, or membership of NATO, and support for an extension of the Black Sea Fleet base beyond 2017.

President Yanukovych may ignore the illegal actions of Crimean deputies and in so doing act very differently to Kuchma, who was first elected on a more moderate “pro-Russian” platform in 1994. Yanukovych and Kuchma are very different. Kuchma was more successful in destroying Russian separatism in the Crimea in a non-violent manner than his predecessor, Leonid Kravchuk. In 1995, Kuchma banned the institution of the Crimean presidency and through economic blockades and intelligence operations undermined the separatist movement. Two other factors also worked in Kuchma’s favor that are now absent: Russian passivity and internal rivalries in the separatist camp.

Russian separatists were marginalized over the following decade. Kuchma supported Ukraine’s territorial integrity and made this a corner stone of his foreign policy. The GUAM regional group, established in 1997 by Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, had among its main aims combating separatism and promoting territorial integrity.

The GUAM members, other than Ukraine, had frozen conflicts on their territories. Since August 2008, Georgia has faced a Russian occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In 2002-2004, Prime Minister Yanukovych did not question the president’s foreign policy on GUAM, arms supplies to Georgia, sending Ukrainian troops to Iraq or seeking a Membership Action Plan from NATO in 2002 and 2004.

Yanukovych’s real persona only became evident after the Orange Revolution and Yushchenko’s election. From 2005-2006, the Party of Regions reversed the marginalization of Russian nationalists and separatists in the Crimea, in effect assisting Russian covert intelligence support for separatists in the peninsula, Trans-Carpathia and Odessa. Yanukovych said during round two that “GUAM has lost its importance” (Ukrayinska Pravda, February 4).

The Party of Regions united with two Russian nationalist parties in the For Yanukovych bloc that won the 2006 Crimean parliamentary elections. New Crimean parliamentary elections will be held this year that will provide an opportunity for Russian nationalists to mobilize. The For Yanukovych bloc included the Party of Regions, Russian bloc and the Russian Community of the Crimea (ROK). The Russian bloc is financed by Moscow’s Mayor, Yury Luzhkov, and has close links to Russian intelligence. ROK, led by the First Deputy Speaker of the Crimean Parliament, Sergei Tsekov, is the most influential Russian nationalist group in the peninsula, and is financed by Luzhkov, Konstantin Zatulin, the Russian foreign ministry and presidential administration.

Yanukovych’s revival of Russian nationalists has had three ramifications. First, joint annual military maneuvers with NATO in the Crimea were disrupted by Party of Regions and Russian nationalist protestors, maneuvers that had been held annually under Kuchma. The Party of Regions blocked votes in parliament to permit the entrance of foreign military units on Ukrainian territory (UNIAN, August 8, 2009).

Second, the Crimean parliament voted in September 2008 to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. A similar Party of Regions resolution (no. 3076-1) in the Ukrainian parliament denouncing Georgia and calling upon Ukraine to recognize the independence of both territories failed. Pro-Russian leaders in the CIS refused to follow Yanukovych’s pro-separatist position. Yanukovych’s defense of his pro-separatist position by drawing on an analogy with Kosovo (mimicking Russia) was ridiculed.

Third, the Crimea became emboldened to demand greater rights as an autonomous republic. Yanukovych’s support for the extension of the Black Sea Fleet base will further embolden Crimean Russian nationalists.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had petitioned the justice ministry to ban three organizations “controlled from abroad” that threatened Ukraine’s territorial integrity: the Donetsk Republic, Peoples Front “Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia” and pro-Russian Rusyn organizations in Trans-Carpathia. The Odessa prosecutor’s office had opened a criminal case against the For Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (ZUBR) organization for inciting ethnic and religious hostility (Interfax-Ukraine, December 2, 2009).

Funding for Russian nationalist-separatists is transferred through Russian covert assistance using grants from the Rusky Mir (Russian World) government-funded foundation. Luzhkov’s influence over the Moscow city council also gave donations of $20 million to Crimean projects and in 2010 will spend $10 million on supporting the Russian “diaspora” in the former Soviet Union.

President Yanukovych has a constitutional right to recognize foreign territories and therefore could follow through in his Party’s support in 2008 for South Ossetian and Abkhazian independence. Before taking this step, Yanukovych should be made aware that Russian parliamentary resolutions adopted in 1992-1993 remain in place. These annulled the 1954 transfer of the Crimea from the Soviet Russian to the Ukrainian republics and questioned the “legality” of Ukrainian sovereignty over Sevastopol (Ukrayinska Pravda, January 26).

To view other artciles published by Eurasia Daily Monitor, The Jamestown Foundation click here