Military reform may lead to "simple quantity changes"

Duma deputy Viktor Ilyukhin fears that the armed forces reduction announced at yesterday's sitting of the Security Council might lead to "simple quantity changes" without influencing the quality of armed forces training. In an interview with RBC, he expressed a negative attitude towards the initiative to reduce the number of the military personnel within a 5-year period. He stressed that the dragging out of the process "might bring about psychological uncertainty in the future among officers." Supporting the idea of armed forces reduction on the whole, Ilyukhin speaks against an offer to start the reduction process with subdivisions of the Defense Ministry and frontier troops. According to him, it is necessary, first and foremost, to reduce military subdivision of the Emergencies Ministry and special purpose units of the Interior Ministry, which will allow for a reduction in the number of generals and service departments. Ilyukhin thinks that a reshuffle is likely to take place in the Defense Ministry.