Russia plans to bolster navy to ward off Nato
MOSCOW/ KYIV Russia announced plans on Tuesday to bolster its navy with more advanced weapons in response to Nato’s vow to halt the Kremlin’s push into Ukraine and feared expansion into eastern Europe.
Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told a general security meeting that he expected to hear a detailed report from Russia’s navy commander about how this could be achieved efficiently over the coming six years.
“These proposals must ensure that our forces are reequipped with modern weapons and military equipment,” Russian news agencies quoted Shoigu as saying.
The new strategy “must also improve the operational readiness of Russian naval forces in locations posing the greatest strategic threat,” said Shoigu.
“I will not hide that this in large part is linked to events of recent months,” he said in reference to the pro-Russian insurgency convulsing eastern Ukraine.
Russian news reports did not immediately outline what proposal Shoigu and the navy command had in mind.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, seventeen bodies have been recovered from the site of an artillery strike on a refugee bus convoy in east Ukraine, but further operations have been suspended due to renewed fighting in the area, a Ukrainian military spokesman said.
Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the 17 bodies had been recovered on Monday night from the charred wreckage of the convoy which included buses and cars, and operations had continued into Tuesday.
Six others were being treated in hospital for injuries, of whom three were in a serious condition, Lysenko added.
But he later said that further fighting in the area had brought this to a halt. “Work has now been suspended because military activity has begun again in the area,” Lysenko told a news briefing.
The military said on Monday that many of those killed had been burned beyond recognition. Many bodies had been blown apart by the blast.
The US State Department condemned the attack but said it could not confirm who was responsible.
“We strongly condemn the shelling and rocketing of a convoy that was bearing internally displaced persons in Luhansk… Sadly, they were trying to get away from the fighting and instead became victims of it,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a news briefing in Washington.
The Defence Academy of the UK – the official post-graduate school for the British military’s higher command – said Russia’s current plan through 2020 that Shoigu wants to update is focused on the development of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers.
Russia has only one functioning aircraft carrier that was first commissioned in the Soviet era and has been lacking the money and know-how to develop a more modern class.
The defence ministry’s attempts in the past two years to procure new weapons from its huge network of defence production facilities were hampered by the discovery that plants simply lacked the technology to churn out modern weapons in any significant quantity.
The Defence Academy of the UK notes that Russia’s “industrial base… remains a significant area of concern”.
“The Russian navy continues to have major problems with readiness and the quality of both personnel and equipment.”
Shoigu said that Russia’s recent attempts to improve procurement by awarding contracts to outside companies had also failed to live up to expectations.