Russia Slashes Military

Russia will slash its forces by nearly one-third over the next two-and-a-half years, the defense minister said Friday—a sign that Russian officials have decided they can't afford their vast but dilapidated military.

"A corresponding decision has been made, and now (we) are preparing suggestions for the president on how to carry it out," Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev told journalists.

The cuts will slash about 350,000 people from the 1.2 million-strong Russian military. Speaking at a ceremony at the headquarters of the Kantemirovskaya tank division outside Moscow, Sergeyev said the reduction would be complete by 2003.

The move appears to reflect Russian leaders' growing recognition that the nation can no longer afford a huge military.

The current Russian defense budget is just $55 billion, compared with annual U.S. defense spending of about $300 billion.

The military's poverty has left troops underfed, ill-equipped and barely trained, while military hardware has been poorly maintained.

Following the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine last month—a tragedy that underlined the armed forces' decline—Putin said Russia should trim its military into a "compact" and modern fighting force.

But even before the disaster, Putin had made reviving the armed forces a top priority. One of his first actions as president was to approve plans to modernize Russia's arsenal of conventional weapons, and military spending has been increased—though it is not known by how much.

Sergeyev has wanted to modernize Russia's nuclear capabilities even at the expense of conventional forces, while other generals have fought to have fewer missiles and more troops to fight wars like thain Chechnya.

Now it appears both missiles and men may be cut back, said Alexander Golts, military affairs writer for Moscow's Itogi magazine.

"They understand that the country, even with an economy that is more successful than it was a year ago, simply cannot support a military of 1.2 million," Golts said.

Golts warned that the cuts, while a step in the right direction, would have little meaning unless the military ends its emphasis on trying to counterbalance Europe and the United States.

It must shift to regional conflicts like that in Chechnya, Golts said, where lightly armed guerrillas have bogged down Russia's forces on its own territory.

Russia has already cut its armed forces down from 5 million troops in the past decade under a reform program launched by former President Boris Yeltsin.

The program announced by Sergeyev would carry that reduction even further.

The deepest cuts would come in land forces, with about 180,000 troops removed from active service, the Interfax news agency reported, citing an unnamed source in the Defense Ministry. The navy would lose 50,000 personel and the air force about 40,000, the report said.

By ANDREW KRAMER