November 29, 2024: Currently the Russian military is organized domestically into five military districts; Leningrad, Moscow, Central, Eastern, and Southern. In 2010 there were six or more, but the military reforms Russia has undergone since the 1990s reduced the number of districts as well as reducing and reorganizing the forces within each district. Each district was in charge of all the troops and bases within the district. Operations in Ukraine are controlled by generals from the Moscow District. As the war in Ukraine continued beyond the few weeks Russian leaders originally thought it would take, the other four military districts were gradually stripped of most of their military units. This was made possible by the reforms carried out in the districts since 1991. The districts have some autonomy with what they do and the central military command sought the most effective developments in districts and adopted them for the entire military.

For years frustrated Russian leaders have been going public with statistics describing the sorry state of military reform efforts since the 1990s. You know the leadership is serious about changing something when senior people start spouting embarrassing statistics. Among the problems were officers in military schools still spending much of their time studying World War II. The world has moved on, and the Russian military leadership has not. Many Russian generals believed that serious reform should have begun after the Americans demonstrated what modern military tech and training methods could do during the 1991 Gulf War. At the time, Russian generals dismissed the results of that war because the Americans were fighting Arabs. This absolved Russia of any responsibility for the poor performance of the Russian weapons Iraq was using.

It was pointed out that Russia didn't really try to reform after 1991, but simply reacted to over a decade of more immediate problems. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, it had five million troops. Now it's down to about one million in just Russia, which got about half the population of the Soviet Union, and most of the territory, when the USSR dissolved. Although the Russian armed forces lost 80 percent of its strength since 1991, a disproportionate number of officers remained. Twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian military had about 1.2 million personnel. This included 400,000 in the army itself, and the rest in paramilitary units that are largely uniformed and armed like soldiers. But there were 355,000 officers in this force. That's more than one in three, and included 1,107 generals, 25,665 colonels, 99,550 majors, 90,000 captains, and only 50,000 lieutenants. With all that, some 40,000 officer positions were still vacant. That led to a reorganization that eliminated 20 percent of the generals, 65 percent of the colonels, 75 percent of the majors, and 55 percent of the captains. The number of lieutenants was increased 20 percent. The 2,500 military organizations were reduced by 80 percent. Most of these organizations were reserve units and Cold War relics that contained only a cadre of officers. In the event of a major war, reservists, who were no longer available, would be called up to use the stockpiled equipment, which was now missing. The general staff had its personnel cut 61 percent to 8,500 and military districts and bases were consolidated. This eliminated thousands of officer jobs. Many generals were not happy with all these cuts, but their resistance never got beyond sharp words and bitter regrets. Nevertheless, all these cuts are not enough.

The biggest change was the age of the senior officers. For those that served before 1991, many senior Russian generals and admirals suspected that they were the victims, as well as the authors, of all the bad decisions made during the Soviet period. After 1991 new generations of military leaders accepted the fact that Russia had fallen way behind in military technology and thinking. The 1991 generals, who spent their entire careers facing the United States as the primary foe, could not accept the fact that the American military had evolved farther, and more quickly, than Russia. But post-1991 generals accepted the fact that the Americans, and Western military professionals in general, had done a better job adapting rapidly changing technology to military use.

Throughout the 1990s Russian military leaders sought to convince the politicians to pay more attention to personnel problems and that they should not hastily buy a lot of new weapons that were often second rate. Russian defense industries were under attack by politicians and generals for years for producing inferior weapons

Until Russia became more aggressive in 2014, the military was allowed to buy warships, armored vehicles, UAVs and infantry equipment from Western suppliers. But reformist generals warned that the best weapons in the world do little good if you have not got world class troops to operate them. Conscription had to go, and the military needed better training, more professionalism and a more open minded attitude towards what works, and what doesn't. The government was spending more on military pay, so it was really up to the generals to actually do what they say needed to be done.

That never happened because there was not enough money to buy all the new equipment or create an all-volunteer force. Conscription continued and most reforms were never enacted. One exception was the reorganization of the military districts. This did not cost much, because it was mainly staff work. Russian military staffs have long been among the best in the world. All this staff work warned that an invasion of Ukraine would not be easy. The staff advice was ignored and some staff officers were replaced with men more positive about conquering Ukraine. This is not the first time, in many nations, where sound staff advice was ignored in favor of disastrously flawed plans. Ukraine is the latest example and most national military staffs will ignore or misinterpret the lessons of Ukraine. Some traditions, especially bad ones, tend to resurface again and again because there are military and political leaders who don’t believe the past has any influence on the future.