April 22, 2014
Over the past few years, NATO countries have helped Russia revolutionize
its armed forces. Now questions are arising about a German defense contractor
that trained the Russian military.
The world was shocked when Russian special operations forces invaded
Crimea with advanced technology, drastically improved operations, and with so
much operational security that even agencies in the U.S. intelligence community
didn’t see it coming. In Washington, government and congressional leaders
are wondering how the Russian special operations forces got so good, so fast,
without anyone noticing. Some are wondering how much help Russia had from the
West.
In 2011, for example, the German defense contractor Rheinmetall signed a $140
million contract to build a combat simulation training center in
Mulino, in southwest Russia, that would train 30,000 Russian combat troops per
year. While the facility wasn't officially scheduled to be completed until
later this year, U.S. officials believe that Germany has been training Russian
forces for years.
Rheinmetall defended the project even after the invasion of Crimea, up
until the German government finally shut it down
late last month. But many tracking the issue within the U.S.
government were not happy with Germany's handling of the Russian contract, and
worry that some of the training may have gone to the kind of special operations
forces now operating in and around Ukraine.
“It’s unfortunate that German companies were directly supporting and training
Russia’s military even during the attacks against Ukraine,” one senior Senate
aide told The Daily Beast. “The U.S. government should call on our NATO allies
to suspend all military connections with Russia at this point, until the
Russians leave Ukraine, including Crimea.”
According to the Congressional
Research Service, Rheinmetall’s partner in the deal was the Russian
state-owned Oboronservis (“Defense Service”) firm. The training center, modeled
after one used by the German Bundeswehr, was to be “the most advanced system of
its kind worldwide.” Reinmetall saw the contract as a precursor to several more
projects “in light of the plans to modernize the equipment of the Russian armed
forces.”
U.S. officials, now looking back, are privately expressing anger and
frustration about the German work with the Russian military. While definitive
proof is hard to come by, these officials look at the radical upgrade of
Moscow’s forces–especially its special operations forces–experienced since they
last saw major action in 2008's invasion of Georgia. The U.S. officials believe
that some of the German training over the last few years was given to the GRU
Spetsnaz, the special operations forces that moved unmarked into Crimea and who can now be
found stirring up trouble in eastern Ukraine.
“People are pissed,” one U.S. intelligence official told The Daily
Beast. “The chatter inside the Pentagon is that the training they were
providing was going to Spetznaz.”
Rheinmetall did not respond to a request for comment.
Russia maintains close economic ties with many NATO states–especially
Germany. By some estimates, the country
exported nearly $50 billion in goods to Russia in 2013. Tens, if not hundreds,
of thousands of German jobs depend on Russian trade.
The armed forces of NATO members have also been working with their
counterparts in the Russian military, on and off, for years. Russia has held joint military
exercises with both Germany and the U.S., for example.
America has bought Russian helicopters to use in Afghanistan. And Moscow allows
NATO equipment to pass through Russian territory as the gear comes into and out
of the war zone.
To the Congressional Research Service, “Rheinmetall’s construction of an
army training center could be viewed in the context of the broader bilateral
defense cooperation between Germany and Russia,” the service writes in its
report. “The German… government’s approval of the contract to construct a
training center also appears to be in line with long-standing German policy to
promote military training and joint exercises with partner countries.”
But some on Capitol Hill see the Rheimetall contract as only one example
of the folly of several NATO countries that rushed to sign lucrative defense
contracts with Russia after President Obama declared a new “reset” policy with
the Russian Federation. Lawmakers have tried to halt the French sale of the Mistral,
an amphibious warship, to the Russian Navy. Some are also unhappy about the
Italian sale of Lynx armored personnel carriers to Russia.
A Senate aide said that one of Rheinmetall’s contributions was to help
the Russian army and GRU Spetznaz upgrade their gear. Reports show
that the Russian military units both inside Ukraine and amassed on its eastern
border are sporting brand new communications equipment, body armor, personal
weapons, and ammunition. Taken together, it gives them a huge tactical
advantage over the beleaguered Ukrainian armed forces.
Top defense officials are now acknowledging that Russia’s military has
been revolutionized in recent years. This month, Vice Admiral Frank Pandolfe,
the director for strategic plans and policy for the military’s joint chiefs of
staff, told Congress in open testimony that in recent years Russia has created
regional commands that “coordinate and synchronize planning, joint service
integration, force movement, intelligence support, and the tactical
employment of units” in what he deemed “snap exercises,” or military training
missions that can be ordered at a moment’s notice.
In the testimony, Pandolfe also said Russia has placed greater emphasis
on the use of Special Operations Forces as well as information and cyber
warfare. Experts said that Russian military doctrine was dramatically
updated in the past few years and clearly set out Russia’s plans for
modernization and a focus on highly trained rapid reaction special forces. But
in the West, the papers were not well read, much less understood.
The Russians also changed their doctrine to reflect that they viewed the
threat as not coming from a conventional war, but from the need to protect
Russian populations in unstable states facing what they deemed to be Western
aggression.
“This wasn’t just about implementing lessons learned from [the 2008
invasion of] Georgia, it was about giving them a basis for a different kind of
operations,” said Fiona Hill, a former top intelligence official on Russia, now
with the Brookings Institution. “We should have been paying more attention to
this. There have been these signals for a long time, but we have been misreading
them.”
Western and NATO countries believed they could tie Russia into greater
military cooperation through engagement, but now have realized that Russian was
probably never really interested in that. The Russian military is now organized
to respond to conflicts caused by such things as popular revolutions, political
crises, and domestic insurgencies.
“Everyone was looking for a way to cooperate with the Russian military
and rushed to find ways to do it, including us,” said Hill. “Whatever we do
now, we have to be mindful that the Russians have been preparing for something
else.”
Andranik Migranyan, a past member of Russia’s Presidential Council and
currently an adviser to the Vladimir Putin administration, told reporters that
ever since the Georgia war, Russia has been spending to radically upgrade its
military, but that the West has only itself to blame for not following along.
“We have new armament, new army, new training,” he said. “It’s very
strange you are not following what’s happening.”
