MOSCOW, September 28 (Itar-Tass) — On Tuesday, President Dmitry Medvedev discussed all aspects of the military reform at a meeting with military officials at the Chebarkul firing range in the central military district. Medvedev told the commanders that he continued to explain in absentia to the finance minister Alexei Kudrin, who was fired on Monday, no money should be spared for the army. Medvedev pledged not to cut the expenditures for defense and security.
Earlier military officials had some concerns over probable cuts of defense expenditures, the Novye Izvestia writes. These concerns were raised after on Tuesday Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov noted that the Defense Ministry refused to buy submachine guns AK-74, because their stocks are too big. This statement was immediately taken as a new initiative of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov seeking to cut the expenditures for the Armed Forces. But Dmitry Medvedev denied these allegations. “We cannot do without defense expenditures; the expenditures worthy of the Russian Federation. Therefore, no matter how deplorable this sounds for the budget, we will always have very high expenditures to ensure defense and security,” the president elaborated.
“The expenditures for this are quite high, but they will improve the life of servicemen. This money is spent reasonably,” the Kommersant quotes the president as saying. This statement reminded about Alexei Kudrin’s dismissal on Monday. Kudrin disagreed with the presidential position over the expenses for the army. Speaking on the Armed Forces shifted from self-services to outsourcing, Dmitry Medvedev reiterated, “But if to take it at the state level, if we want to have combat capable armed forces, our servicemen should engage in combat training rather than economic activities. Even despite the fact that this costs some money. This is the world experience and we should go along this path.”
The Russian army in cooperation with other law enforcement agencies in the country and the allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization should practice new ways of combat actions against rebels and terrorists, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes in an article about the final stage of strategic military exercises Center-2011 at the Chebarkul firing range in the Chelyabinsk Region on Tuesday. Dmitry Medvedev was watching the exercises. The president was watching how a tank brigade in interaction with the commandoes and the interior troops is carrying out a mockup operation to mop up the whole settlement from the bandits. There is nothing strategic in this. However, the top brass apparently considers combat actions to be like that in the future.
The newspaper cites First Deputy Interior Minister Alexander Gorovoy, who has made a statement on Tuesday, that the ministry takes preemptive actions to avert massive riots similar to those in Britain. So, the law enforcement agencies practice the worst scenarios to be ready to fulfill any combat missions, which they will be instructed to fulfill, the newspaper noted. These combat missions are conditioned not only by internal, but also external factors. In this respect, Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov noted that Moscow was scrutinizing “the entire scope of military and technical measures” in case of any threats near the Russian borders. First of all, he conditions these threats by the fact that “US partners keep promoting their plans to create a European segment of the US missile defense system” without Russian interests taken into account.
Antonov did not elaborate, which reciprocal military and technical measures Moscow is going to take, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta notes. Though, according to the director of the Center for Analysis of World Arms Trade Igor Korotchenko, these measures can be caused “by a growing serial production of intercontinental ballistic missiles Yars and Bulava, the deployment of tactical missile systems Iskander-M near the NATO borders and the bombers Tu-22M3 retargeted for the missions on the European theatre of operations.