Russia-Military Schools

In 1996 the Ministry of Defense administered a multilevel system of military training institutions, none of which had full enrollment in the mid-1990s. The system included eight military academies and one military university, offering university-level training and education in military and related fields. There were specialized academies for artillery, chemical defense, air defense, air engineering, space engineering, and medicine. The Military University in Moscow specialized in jurisprudence and journalism. In addition, there were about seventy institutions of higher education (vysshiye uchebnyye zavedeniya --VUZy; sing., VUZ) for military studies, most of which fell under one of the main force groups and were further specialized according to subject (for example, the Kazan' Higher Artillery Command-Engineer School and the Ufa Higher Military Aviation School for Pilots).

Field Training

Nominally, the Russian armed forces operate on the same six-month training cycle that was observed by the Soviet armed forces. Each cycle begins with induction of draftees and basic individual training, proceeds to unit training at the levels of squad through division, and terminates with an army-level exercise. In 1994 General Semenov reported that the ground forces had not conducted any divisional exercises for the previous two years. As early as 1989, a reduction in Russia's military training activity became obvious in CSCE reports of major training exercises. This means that by 1996 the armed forces had passed through more than ten cycles without conducting any serious training.

Considering the Russian military five-year personnel assignment cycle, the training hiatus means that there was one, and part of another, military generation in each rank with a serious training deficiency, or no training at all in their nominal assignments. There were platoon and company commanders with no field experience. Few battalion, regimental, and division commanders had practical experience in commanding troops in the field at their present or preceding level.

The air forces of the Russian Federation are the most technologically sensitive of the armed forces. Modern high-performance aircraft demand skilled crews to operate and maintain them. However, in 1995 General Deynekin reported receiving only 30 percent of required funding for fuel, equipment, and parts in 1995--a shortfall that cut pilot flight time in operational squadrons to thirty to forty hours per year, approximately three hours per month in the cockpit. By contrast, the United States standard for pilot proficiency is 180 to 260 hours per year.

Data as of July 1996