FOREIGN MILITARY RELATIONS

FOREIGN MILITARY RELATIONS

No conventional external threat exists. However, the stepwise expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into Eastern Europe and the three Baltic states of the former Soviet Union has caused irritation in Russia, some of which has been alleviated by participation in the NATO–Russia Council and by a NATO promise not to deploy nuclear weapons in the new member countries. [Source: Library of Congress, October 2006 **]

In 2005 Russia and China held their first-ever joint military exercises on the coast of China’s Shandong Province, and in 2006 plans called for continued sales of advanced arms to China. A treaty with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations includes a security partnership section. India plans extended military cooperation with Russian forces after conducting large-scale bilateral naval exercises in 2003. In the early 2000s, Russia intensified its military links in Central Asia. A comprehensive defense treaty with Uzbekistan in 2004 was followed by a 2005 mutual defense treaty. Bilateral defense treaties with Tajikistan ensured the long-term presence of the Russian troops that have been in Tajikistan throughout the post-Soviet era. In 2006 Russia tripled the number of aircraft stationed at its air base at Kant in Kyrgyzstan. **

In 2005 and 2006, Russian forces participated in various joint exercises with forces of Armenia, Canada, India, Kyrgyzstan, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States. In early 2006, joint naval and antiterrorism exercises were held in the Ionian Sea to evaluate the interoperability of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russian systems. The NATO–Russia Council provides Russia input into NATO policies, with the goal of alleviating stress over NATO expansion eastward. Russia is a signatory of the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. Russia receives aid from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union for destruction of its chemical weapons in accord with the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Multilateral Nuclear Environmental Programme in the Russian Federation provides for European assistance projects in nuclear waste disposal. **

Military Presence Overseas in the 1990s: Transcaucasus Group of Forces — 9,000 personnel in Armenia, with one air defense MiG-23 squadron. 22,000 personnel in Georgia, with one air force composite regiment of thirty-five aircraft. Azerbaijan refuses Russian troop presence. Forces in other former Soviet republics: Moldova 6,400 personnel, Tajikistan 12,000 personnel, Turkmenistan 11,000 personnel, and several thousand each in Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan. Contributions to UN missions in Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia, Haiti, Iraq/Kuwait, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Rwanda, and Western Sahara. Signal and intelligence personnel in Vietnam, Syria, Cuba, Mongolia, and parts of Africa. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

American and Russian troops have trained together at Totskoye Training Ground in southern Russia and Fort Riley in Kansas. In 1999, the United States offered to help improve Russia's radar system as part of an efforts to improve missile detection and defense for Russia, the United States and the entire world. One of the aim was to improve methods of detecting missile attacks from North Korea. Russia turned down the offer.

Russia’s Geopolitical Military Status

According to the Ministry of Defense, between 1991 and 1995 the Soviet Union and then Russia withdrew about 730,000 troops from eleven countries: Azerbaijan, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Poland, and Slovakia. Including military families, about 1.2 million people were involved in this shift. Besides the troops, all the paraphernalia of fifteen army directorates, forty-nine combined-arms divisions, seventy brigades, seventy-two aviation regiments, and twenty-four helicopter regiments also were moved from foreign posts. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

The unprecedented speed with which Russia's direct military influence shrank had a strong effect on the national psyche. Beginning in 1993, Russia's foreign policy increasingly reflected the views of influential nationalist and communist elements of the government. Those elements sought political support by reviving the memories of Soviet world power, promising an end to the "subservient" role being played by Russia on the world political stage of the 1990s. Inevitably, Russia's real-world application of its military doctrine is an implicit and explicit element in expanding influence in the directions dictated by a revised foreign policy program. (The 1996 Institute for Defense Studies report indicates that viewpoint.) Given severe funding limitations, however, that expansion seemed to have limited possibilities in mid-1996. *

In the mid-1990s, an increasingly prominent component of Russian foreign policy was recovery of military and economic influence in as many Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations as possible. Along Russia's southern borders, postindependence instability offered a series of opportunities to retain a military presence in the name of "peacekeeping" among warring factions or nations, some of whose hostility could be traced back to actions taken by Russian forces. Variations of this theme occurred in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Tajikistan. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

Russian Military Involvement in Georgia

The course of events along Russia's southwestern frontiers has given Georgia increased military significance since 1991. A critical event was Russia's recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea, formerly Russia's only basing area for its Black Sea Fleet. The drive of the Abkhazian Autonomous Republic for independence from Georgia provided Russia with an opportunity to bargain for access to Black Sea ports in Georgia. Reportedly organized by Russian intelligence agencies and heavily supported by Moscow, a mercenary force of North Caucasus Muslim troops threatened to occupy large portions of Georgia in the early fall of 1993. At this desperate point, the Georgian government offered Russia extended basing privileges in return for the protection of Russian "peacekeeping" forces. Ironically, the Russian-supported mercenaries fighting for Abkhazia formed the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the North Caucasus, which declared its intention of destabilizing Russia's Muslim North Caucasus republics. Therefore, continued access to Georgian territory acquired the additional purpose of encircling potentially separatist enclaves — which is exactly what Russia did in 1994 in preparing to enter Chechnya. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

The 1995 basing agreement that resulted from the Georgian capitulation of 1993 permits the presence of three Russian bases — in Tbilisi, Poti, and Batumi — with tanks, armored personnel carriers, and heavy artillery. However, other Russian forces in Georgia also were identified in 1995 after they took part in bombardments in Chechnya. The troops in Georgia, designated strictly for control of domestic conflicts such as the one in Chechnya, also constitute a violation of the CFE Treaty, to which Russia has sought a special adjustment. *

In mid-1996 there were an estimated 1,700 Russian troops on peacekeeping duty between Georgian and Abkhazian lines in northwestern Georgia, including one airborne regiment and two motorized rifle battalions. The three main Russian bases housed about 8,500 troops with 110 main battle tanks, 510 armored combat vehicles, and 238 artillery pieces.

Russian Military Involvement in Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenia's continued desperate position, locked between Muslim states Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkey and still reeling from the long blockade inflicted by Azerbaijan and Turkey in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, provides ample justification for heavy reliance on Russia for national security. For Russia, Armenia's position on the eastern border of Turkey is a prime location for preventing Russia's traditional enemy from expanding its influence to the north and east. A new unified CIS defense system being created by Russian military planners in 1996 has included the long-term basing of Russian troops on Armenian soil and joint Armenian-Russian exercises on Armenian territory. Russia has lent substantial nonmilitary aid to Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but Russia does not see supporting a complete victory by Armenia over Azerbaijan as strategically advantageous. In mid-1996 Russia had an estimated 4,300 troops at a single base in Armenia, with eighty main battle tanks, 190 armored personnel carriers, and 100 artillery pieces. Russian border troops also assisted in patrolling Armenia's border with Turkey. *

Azerbaijan, whose location adjacent to the rich oil resources of the Caspian Sea makes it strategically more vital to Russia than Armenia, is the only one of the three Caucasus states to refuse any deployment of Russian troops on its soil. Russia fears the increasing influence of Turkey in Azerbaijan, which, according to national security planners, is a likely bridge for Turkish influence into Central Asia and Russia's Muslim republics to the north and east of Azerbaijan. Because of these factors, Russia has exerted substantial diplomatic and economic pressure on Azerbaijan to reappraise its independent policy. However, former Soviet Politburo member Heydar Aliyev, now president of Azerbaijan, has proven much more independent than Russia expected when it assisted him in becoming head of state in 1993. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

Russian Military Involvement in Moldova

The Russian (formerly Soviet) 14th Army has been based on Moldovan (formerly Moldavian) territory since 1956. In September 1990, Slavs on the east bank of the Nistru (Dnestr) River in the Moldavian Republic declared an independent Dnestr Moldavian Republic, or Transnistria. After armed conflict began between forces of the new republic and Moldovan troops in the spring of 1992, part of the 14th Army became a peacekeeping force following an agreement between Russia and the government of newly independent Moldova. The original Russian force included six battalions (2,400 troops), which occupied a security zone together with troops of Moldova and Transnistria. Subsequently, Transnistrian units began replacing units of the 14th Army, taking advantage of what observers called a decided bias by the army in favor of its fellow Slavs. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

By the end of 1994, about 3,500 Transnistrian troops were in the security zone with the tacit approval of the Russian forces, enabling the separatists to consolidate their state. At the same time, Russia violated the agreement with Moldova by withdrawing all but 630 of its peacekeepers, citing the Russian military's funding problems. However, in 1996 the bulk of the 14th Army remained in Moldova, subject to the outcome of long-inconclusive negotiations, under the title Operational Group of Russian Forces in Moldova. (A bilateral 1994 agreement to withdraw the 14th Army entirely never was ratified by the State Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament.) In mid-1996 some 6,400 Russian troops of the 14th Army and two "peacekeeping" battalions remained. Russia has opposed participation by the OSCE in the withdrawal negotiations. Some experts have described Moldova as a potential staging point for

In 1994 Moldova also was the scene of a divisive struggle in the military command. In midyear Minister of Defense Grachev attempted to remove the popular General Aleksandr Lebed' from command of the 14th Army after Lebed' voiced increasingly sharp criticism of the Yeltsin administration. But Yeltsin refused to remove Lebed', magnifying the open struggle between two top military commanders and polarizing the military. Lebed' resigned his command in May 1995 to begin a political career. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

Russian Military Involvement in Central Asia

Large numbers of Soviet military forces were located in the five Central Asian republics when the Soviet Union dissolved officially at the end of 1991. All the newly independent states took measures to gain control over the Soviet units they inherited, establishing a variety of agencies and ministries to define the gradual process of localization. In the mid-1990s, as support grew in Russia for recapturing in some form the lost territories of the former Soviet Union, attention focused on the five Central Asian republics, which still had substantial economic and military ties with the Russian Federation. When the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991, the main military force in Tajikistan was the 201st Motorized Rifle Division, whose position and resources the Russian Federation inherited. Although nominally neutral in the civil war that broke out in Tajikistan in the fall of 1992, the 201st Division, together with substantial forces from neighboring Uzbekistan, played a significant role in the recapture of the capital city, Dushanbe, by former communist forces. As the civil war continued in more remote regions of Tajikistan during the next three years, the 201st Division remained the dominant military force, joining with Russian border troops and a multinational group of "peace-keeping" troops (dominated by Russian and Uzbekistani forces and including troops from Kazakstan and Kyrgyzstan) to patrol the porous border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

The openly avowed purpose of the continued occupation was to protect Russia's strategic interests. Those interests were defined as preventing radical Islamic politicization and the shipment of narcotics, both designated as serious menaces to Russia itself. Meanwhile, Tajikistan formed a small army of its own, of which about three-quarters of the officer corps were Russians in mid-1996. Tajikistan, having no air force, relied exclusively on Russian air power. In mid-1996 the preponderance of the estimated 16,500 troops guarding Tajikistan's borders belonged to Russia's Federal Border Service. Border troops received artillery and armor support from the 201st Division, whose strength was estimated in 1996 as at least 12,000 troops. *

Russia has kept more limited forces in the other Central Asian republics. Turkmenistan consistently has refused to join multilateral CIS military groupings, but Russia maintains joint command of the three motorized rifle divisions in the Turkmenistani army. Under a 1993 bilateral military cooperation treaty, some 2,000 Russian officers serve in Turkmenistan on contract, and border forces (about 5,000 in 1995) are under joint Russian and Turkmenistani command. Altogether, about 11,000 Russian troops remained in Turkmenistan in mid-1996. Uzbekistan has full command of its armed forces, although the air force is dominated by ethnic Russians and Russia provides extensive assistance in training, border patrols, and air defense. Kazakstan, which has the largest standing army (about 25,000 in 1996) of the Central Asian republics, had replaced most of the Russians in its command positions with Kazaks by 1995 — mainly because a large part of the Russian officer corps transferred elsewhere in the early 1990s. No complete Russian units are stationed in Kazakstan, but an estimated 6,000 troops from the former Soviet 40th Army remained there in training positions in 1996, including about 1,500 at the Baykonur space launch center, which Russia leases from Kazakstan. *

In Kyrgyzstan, which has developed little military capability of its own, Russian units guard the border with China. But maintaining military influence in Kyrgyzstan has not been a high priority of Russian military planners; a 1994 bilateral agreement improves incentives for Russian officers to remain in the Kyrgyzstan's army on a contract basis through 1999, but, as in Kazakstan, the Russian exodus has continued. President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan lobbied for a larger Russian military presence to improve his country's security situation, but no action had been taken as of mid-1996. *

Russian Military in Kaliningrad

In the immediate postwar period, the Soviet Union established a formidable, closed enclave in the former East Prussia, including a large naval port at Kaliningrad (formerly Königsberg). When the Soviet Union collapsed, the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania deprived the new Russian state of major ports on the Baltic Sea, and 15,000-square-kilometer Kaliningrad Oblast between Poland and Lithuania was cut off from Russia. When Russia insisted on maintaining Kaliningrad as a heavily armed garrison, it aroused considerable international criticism, especially from Poland. Königsberg was awarded to the Soviet Union under the Potsdam Accord in 1945, but the Russian Federation holds no legal title to the enclave. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

When Russia withdrew all its former Warsaw Pact forces from Poland and the Baltic states during 1992-94, some air, naval, and ground forces were relocated to Kaliningrad, ostensibly because of housing shortages elsewhere in Russia. In mid-1996 the official military garrison was estimated at 24,000 ground troops of the 11th Guards Combined Arms Army, including one tank division and three motorized rifle divisions, three artillery brigades, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles, and attack helicopters. The Baltic Fleet, which has its headquarters at Kaliningrad, includes three cruisers, two destroyers, eighteen frigates, sixty-five patrol boats, and 195 combat aircraft, together with one brigade of naval infantry and two regiments of coastal defense artillery. Western experts estimate that the total Kaliningrad garrison includes as many as 200,000 military personnel, compared with the official Russian figure of 100,000. *

In 1993 the population of the enclave was about 900,000, of whom about 700,000 were Russians. There is strong sentiment in favor of autonomy among the civilian population, and international pressure continues to advocate reducing the garrison to a level of "reasonable sufficiency," far below its current size. Many Russian military authorities agree with this idea because maintaining the Kaliningrad force is extremely expensive. However, a large-scale deemphasis of the military would be difficult because the entire oblast has been structured to meet the needs of the armed forces. In addition, Russian nationalists argue that Kaliningrad is a vital outpost at a time when Russia is menaced by possible Polish or even Lithuanian membership in NATO. *

Russian Military Relations with China

In 1995 and 1996, Russia and China moved closer on economic and military issues, after many years of insecurity along the two countries' long common frontier. On the Russian side, the move was prompted by a new general emphasis on relations with Asia that also includes the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia; on the Chinese side, there was concern about the stability of the Central Asian republics and the possible spread of separatist sentiments together with politicized Islam, especially in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which borders Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakstan. With Russia sharing those concerns, in April 1996 Beijing and Moscow announced a "strategic partnership" that was hailed as a watershed agreement and was accompanied by combined blasts at Western attempts to dominate lesser countries. China voiced support for Russia's Chechnya operation, and Russia backed China's claims of hegemony in Taiwan and Tibet. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

New military agreements provide for long-term military and technical cooperation, including Russian aid to Chinese arms industries, modernization of weapons already sold to China, and the sale of new weapons to China at advantageous prices. Among the reported terms of the April 1996 agreement is the sharing of space technology by Russia's State Space Agency, the sale of diesel submarines and S-300 air defense missile complexes, and production in China of Su-27 jet fighters. *

In the April 1996 talks, the two sides pledged to observe earlier border demarcation agreements, and Russia ceded some disputed pieces of land. The issue of reducing military forces and defining the border was the subject of ongoing talks in 1996. *

NATO Issue

The Russian military has unanimously opposed any expansion of NATO in Central Europe or the former Soviet Union since the idea first appeared in the early 1990s, and virtually all political factions are in agreement. Russia worries that such expansion would leave it in a strategically untenable position, despite NATO's claims of the purely defensive character of its alliance. In the mid-1990s, Russian fears have been fanned by the increasingly influential anti-Western factions in the State Duma and by the increased urgency with which Central European and Baltic states have sought NATO membership. [Source: Library of Congress, July 1996 *]

Russian military thinkers see NATO expansion as moving the world's most powerful military force to the very border of the former Soviet Union (or even past the border, were Ukraine and the Baltic states to join). Contrary to Western claims, Russians see no potential for improvement in Russia's security in this process, except in the unlikely inclusion of Russia as a full NATO member. In 1994 Russia was offered, and eventually accepted, membership in the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP), into which all former Soviet republics and former Warsaw Pact members were admitted by the end of 1995. *

In the period 1994-96, top-level Russian national security representatives put forward a variety of threats and proposals on the subject of NATO expansion. Extreme nationalist factions used the issue to back their argument that the United States is leading an international plot against Russia. In 1995 a set of perceived NATO deceptions of Russian negotiators in Bosnia and Herzegovina was used as evidence of NATO's untrustworthiness. Russia counterproposed that NATO transform itself into a strictly political alliance that would become part of a new pan-European security system on the model of the OSCE. Meanwhile, Russia has exerted strong pressure on the states most imminently eligible for NATO membership, especially Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states, including threats that nuclear war might break out in Central Europe if Russia needed to defend itself against NATO forces that had moved into the region. In 1995 Russian national security representatives promised that NATO expansion would suspend Russian compliance with the CFE Treaty and make impossible Russian ratification of part two of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) — two cornerstones of disarmament in the view of Western policy makers. Meanwhile, the "NATO threat" was a rationale for maintaining a large garrison at the western outpost in Kaliningrad. *

In 1999, as the Kosovo conflict wound down to a close, two TU-95 Bear bombers invaded NATO airspace at Iceland and were escorted by U.S. Air Force F-15s.

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, U.S. government, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated May 2016


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