Georgia keeps my son by force – Russian soldier’s mom

The mother whose son, a Russian soldier, reportedly deserted to live in Georgia says he is being kept in that country against his will. She has been in South Ossetia, where he served, for three days but has yet to meet her son.

Aleksandr Glukhov’s mother claims Georgia has repeatedly denied her request for a meeting, only allowing phone calls. Galina Glukhova also believes someone is controlling what her son says.

“I have talked with him on several occasions and I felt, all the time, that someone was near him. It was not my son who was talking to me. He is a person under psychological pressure. I do want the Georgian authorities to allow my son to travel back home to his family”, Glukhova told Interfax on Wednesday.

Georgia says Sergeant Glukhov fled his army unit due to unbearable living conditions.

Crisis stalls military reform – generals rejoice

Alexandre Antonov, Russia Today

http://www.russiatoday.com

The controversial reform of the Russian armed forces announced by the defence minister last October faces a major change of schedule. The ministry lacks funding for the planned rapid military transformation.

The reform – which is meant to radically change the face of the Russian Army, Navy and Air Force – was scheduled to be finished by 2012, but recently President Medvedev said the deadline for the downsizing of the military is 2016. The Defence Ministry later said they were not going to change their plans, but insiders hint that the ministry is already behind the schedule and doesn’t have enough money to carry out all the changes they want, and with the global credit crisis gaining momentum this is unlikely to change.

All military experts agree that a radical reform of the Russian armed forces is long overdue. Indeed, all defence ministers in post-soviet Russia had plans on how to make the relic of the Cold War into a modern organisation capable of dealing with modern threats. The Russian military is suffering from a number of problems, including aging hardware, lack of prestige of the career in the service, and corruption to name a few, but for whatever reasons the reforms were never implemented in full scale. 

A change we can believe in… Serdyukov’s way

In October 2008, the current Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov announced his plan for a military transformation. The reform can be called the most ambitious one in decades, and one of the most controversial as well. Many senior officers heavily criticised it, and media reported of a ‘mutiny’ against it by top brass, which the ministry strongly denied.

Georgia, Britain to ‘deepen’ military cooperation: Tbilisi

NATO-hopeful Georgia and Britain plan to “deepen” military cooperation, the ex-Soviet republic’s defence minister said Wednesday after meeting a top British security official.

“Our military cooperation is productive and intensive. We agreed… that these relations will be further deepened,” Defence Minister David Sikharlidze said in televised remarks after talks in Tbilisi with Britain’s minister of international defence and security Ann Taylor.

Russian Ramps Up Iskander-M Engine Production

Russia’s Omsk engine design and production bureau has begun a large-scale production of engines for the Iskander-M short-range tactical missile system, RIA Novosti reported Friday.

“The company has received a large Defense Ministry order to manufacture engines for Iskander-M systems. The first batch must be supplied by the end of February,” Valery Kovalchuk, Omsk bureau deputy general director, told the news agency.

According to the report, Kovalchuk stated that the Omsk bureau was fully prepared to manufacture the Iskander. He said it already had lined up all necessary design, testing and production personnel and equipment necessary to start full-cycle production of the engines. The Omsk bureau would work at full capacity on producing Iskander-M engines for the next five years, he said.

The RIA Novosti report noted that the Iskander-M short-range, mobile tactical missile (NATO designation SS-26 Stone) is propelled by two solid-propellant single-stage 9M723K1 guided missiles, giving it a “quasi-ballistic” capability. This ability to maneuver, combined with the Iskander-M’s very low trajectory, relatively fast speed and rapid acceleration thanks to its solid fuel propellant, makes the missile very difficult to intercept after it is launched.