The Russian General Staff’s Main Operations Directorate (GOU) has a distinguished past, a rather lackluster present and an uncertain future. Sometimes rightly described as the ‘brain of the army‘ (unkind souls may regard that as a rather low bar, akin to being the ‘soul of the tax office’ or ‘heart of the Chekist’), the GOU is at once a planning body, a liaison agency with other federal power agencies such as the MVD and FSB, a kind of operational think tank and an incubator of the brightest military thinkers. Or at least that’s the plan. In recent years it has been in disarray: four chiefs in four years, a massive cut in staff from 500 to 150, and a very poor performance in the 2008 Georgian invasion, which was in a number of ways handled very badly. On the other hand, given the paucity of present military thought (something Chief of the General Staff Makarov himself admits), and the current drive to reform the military and create a meaningful operational art for the new brigade-based structure, I’d suggest that the need for the GOU has never been greater.

Anyway, on October 3 GOU chief Lt. Gen. Tretyak for formally dismissed, although he had requested to be released on medical grounds in the summer and had already physically moved out of his office. In his place comes Lt. Gen. Vladimir Zarudnitsky, a line officer with a reasonable but not especially impressive resume (more…)