42
With Courage and Persistence
Forces.
1
Shaposhnikov said that breaking apart the Soviet
Armed Forces into national armies would radically change
their missions, disrupt personnel and destroy their combat
effectiveness for many years. Dividing the Soviet Union’s
nuclear forces was simply unthinkable.
2
If the CIS Armed
Forces were to retain the former Soviet empire’s military
power and influence, it had to preserve intact its military
forces, together with their centralized logistics, personnel
and support systems. Consequently, Yeltsin, Kozarev and
Shaposhnikov all supported the CIS and its armed forces in
the winter and spring months of 1992.
Their support was so strong that they did not establish a
Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) nor Russian Armed Forces
until May 1992, six months after the Soviet Union collapsed.
The reason was that the CIS Armed Forces were essentially
controlled by a Russian marshal, the Russian General Staff
and the Russian dominated military-industrial enterprises.
Under this regional security concept, the newly independent
states would not control their own army, navy, air force or
military-industrial complexes. At the CIS summit meeting in
Minsk in February 1992, leaders of Ukraine, Moldova and
Azerbaijan declared they would be establishing their own
national military forces. In fact, Ukraine had already done so
a month earlier. Ukraine’s Armed Forces would be separate,
but subordinate to the CIS Armed Forces Command.
3
All the
other nations would be defended by the CIS Armed Forces.
They would not have independent national armies, navies or
air forces.
4
At this summit, Russian Marshal Shaposhnikov
was formally confirmed as the Commander-in-Chief of the
CIS Armed Forces. Given the nationalism that forced the
President Boris Yeltsin and General Pavel S. Grachev (l.-r.)
RIA Novosti
