Army Plans to Cut 300,000 Troops

The Russian armed forces will cut an additional 300,000 men from its ranks by October to create a standing army of 1.9 million, the Defense Minister Pavel Grachev has announced.The plans were unveiled by Pavel Grachev on Monday just three days after President Boris Yeltsin said the military needed a belt tightening."The army should be more active in cutting the number of servicemen," Yeltsin told a press conference Friday. "I cannot understand their indecision."The cutbacks will affect servicemen across all spheres of the military, Grachev told Interfax. Two hundred-seventy generals will lose their jobs, leaving 1,780 still in the army, he said.In 1992 the Ministry of Defense had announced plans to trim down to 1.5 million servicemen, or about 1 percent of the population, by the year 2000. But Grachev has since changed his mind and raised his minimum ante to 2.1 million and now 1.9 million. A year ago he said a million professional soldiers with advanced weapons could protect the countryRussia has already significantly reduced its force size since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In May, Grachev said that he trimmed a half a million men over the past two years.Russia has made some moves to improve the quality of its servicemen by hiring volunteer soldiers. Since 1992, the military has hired 150,000 on a contract basis, Skrilnik said. Sergei Oznobishchev, director of the USA/Canada Institute's international security studies said that Grachev's so-called latest minimum force requirement of 1.9 million is based more on bureaucratic inertia than real need."Given our economic situation, of course we should reduce the size more," he continued.