Russian MPs and senators praise defence minister’s dismissal

Anatoliy Serdyukov file photo

(Interfax – November 6, 2012) The dismissal of Russian Defence Minister Anatoliy Serdyukov has been welcomed by senior figures in the Duma and the Federation Council, media sources reported. Serdyukov’s critics pointed to the way the military are being reorganized and to a fraud scandal that has recently erupted at the ministry. They contrasted this to the record of his replacement, Sergey Shoygu, formerly emergencies minister and Moscow Region governor.

“It was late but the time comes when you have to answer for what you do,” the Communist Party’s Viktor Komoyedov, a retired admiral who chairs the Duma Defence Committee, said.

“I’m not talking about the serious abuses that the law-enforcement bodies found at Oboronservis,” he told Interfax news agency, referring to allegations of fraud at a company managing Defence Ministry property. “What I mean is that under Serdyukov the Armed Forces were reformed in a way that failed to draw on the Soviet and Russian armies’ positive traditions.”

Aleksey Pushkov, the One Russia (United Russia) chair of the International Affairs Committee, agreed on the Oboronservis angle. “Putin has sacked Serdyukov because of the latest scandal,” he wrote on Twitter. “Decision overdue. Abroad, ministers resign of their own accord after such scandals.”

In the Federation Council, First Deputy Speaker Aleksandr Torshin described Putin’s move as “an appropriate decision by the head of state”.

The Oboronservis story has been a serious “image and reputational blow” to the military, he told Interfax, calling for a full and open investigation. He was full of praise for Shoygu, who “created the Emergencies Ministry from scratch, and today it can handle the most complex and difficult of tasks”.

Noting Shoygu’s consistently high confidence ratings among the public, Torshin continued: “We now need to restore trust in the leadership of the Ministry of Defence as an institution and Shoygu’s appointment is a good step in terms of the image, because he is not only a military man and not just a colonel-general but a Hero of Russia, a decisive man, a man of results who sets a goal and knows how to attain it.”

The first deputy chair of the Defence and Security Committee agreed. “Sergey Shoygu has great experience of running large organizations such as the Emergencies Ministry,” Nikolay Fedoryak told Interfax-AVN military news agency. “He is a man of impeccable reputation … I think that the president has done the right thing by appointing him.”

For him, Oboronservis was one scandal too many with the outgoing minister. “The failures with the military reform, the corruption now found at the ministry, there’s been nothing like this in the history of the Armed Forces,” Fedoryak said. “So I think the president’s decision to replace Serdyukov is justified although probably overdue.”

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