5/17/18
While the Kremlin’s newly professionalized military is armed with top-of-the-line ship-launched cruise missiles, flying more capable strike aircraft and firing precision munitions Russia, “does not have the ability to sustain forces far from the border,” a military expert said on Wednesday. “Syria pushed Russian logistics to its limits,” Anton Lavrov, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and affiliated with the Center for Analysis and Technologies in Moscow, said. Moscow’s logistical trouble in Syria to maintain the 5,000 personnel, helicopters and aircraft illustrate one of the serious shortfalls in President Vladimir Putin’s drive to pull Russia’s conventional and nuclear forces out of their post-Soviet decay. “Russia doesn’t have the capability to sustain 20,000” troops in continuous operations far from its borders for any length of time. Even getting there is a challenge — from pier to pier, Lavrov said. The Kremlin had to buy old Black Sea merchant ships in Crimea and convert them into transports to move the soldiers and equipment including large trucks and heavy artillery, to its base in Syria and ports under the control of President Bashar al-Assad. And that was for movement into an uncontested area at the water’s edge.
Lavrov said the Russian public, like the American, “don’t want high casualties” in the Kremlin’s interventions even in the “near abroad,” like Ukraine and Georgia, and most certainly further from their borders like Syria. Russians have been engaged in the Syrian civil war for almost three years. They want its military leaders “to use technical superiority to fight” over putting “boots on the ground” or, when needed, use proxies for ground combat over committing Russian troops. “Russian leaders must hear the people,” he added. Lavrov said the impact of sanctions following the taking of Crimea and backing separatists in Ukraine first meant to modernize that former Soviet research and development projects that were feasible got the go ahead. Now after fielding them, like the precision munitions used in Syria, the Russians are looking at what will be the new tanks, fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, long-range drones with strike capabilities and laser-protection systems that they will need in the future.
To sustain the modernization effort and professionalization of the officer corps and ranks under those conditions, Russia needs to “scrap some programs.” Seventy percent of its announced defense budget goes to equipment, he added.
