Russian Airborne Forces


The Russian Airborne Forces is the airborne separate combat arm of the Russian Armed Forces. It is a rapid response force and strategic reserve that is under the President of Russia, reporting directly to the Chief of the General Staff, and is organized into airborne and air assault units. It was formed in 1992 from divisions of the Soviet Airborne Forces that came under Russian control following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Troops of the Russian Airborne Forces have traditionally worn a blue beret and blue-striped telnyashka undershirt and are called desant, from the French Descente.
The Russian Airborne Forces utilizes a range of specialist airborne warfare vehicles and are fully mechanized. Traditionally they have had a larger complement of heavy weaponry than most contemporary airborne forces.

Mission

According to an order of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation in 1997, the Airborne Forces form the strategic reserve of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, under the direct command of the Chief of the General Staff, and as a rapid response force may be tasked with carrying out operations either independently or within larger army groups alongside units of the Ground Forces. The Airborne Forces can also participate in peacekeeping missions under the mandate of the United Nations or the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
The Airborne Forces are organized into three types of units, consisting of Airborne, Air Assault, and Mountain Air Assault. The airborne units can be parachuted into a combat zone, while the air assault units are airlifted there by aircraft or helicopter. Specifically designated mountain units were created after the Airborne Forces were frequently used in conflicts in the North Caucasus region in the immediate post-Soviet years. The structure of the Airborne Forces uses airborne or air assault divisions for the operational level, airborne or air assault brigades for the operational-tactical level, and regiments for the tactical level. This structure can be augmented with the addition of Ground Forces motorized rifle, artillery, aviation, or other units, depending on the situation.
After studying airborne operations during World War II, the Soviet leadership concluded they were largely unsuccessful, with only a few exceptions. They recognized the potential for an airborne force to attack targets behind enemy lines, but the main problems that were identified included a lack of firepower. An effort to resolve this was the introduction of the BMD series of armored vehicles in 1970, which were eventually issued to every regiment of an airborne division. Up to the present, the Russian Airborne Forces are more heavily armed than their Western counterparts, with the usage of armored personnel carriers.

History

Founding and reorganization

The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to the dividing up of the former Soviet Armed Forces by the newly independent states. The Russian Airborne Forces were established on 7 May 1992 by a decree from the President of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin. He held a meeting with the heads of state of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan to determine the distribution of former Soviet military assets. During 1992 and 1993 many of the airborne units were transferred to the territory of Russia, as only two of the seven Soviet airborne divisions had been located in the former Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. During this process the Russian General Staff wanted to prioritize maintaining control over the strategic assets of the Soviet military, which besides the Strategic Rocket Forces also included the Airborne Forces. There was initially an attempt to keep them under the joint command of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but the concept of the CIS unified forces fell apart by the summer of 1993, as the independent states took control over the units on their territories.
The Russian Federation kept six of the seven divisions, which as of 1993 included:
The remaining division, the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, became part of the Belarusian Ground Forces.
Russia also received seven of the sixteen Soviet airborne and air assault brigades, and some additional units, which included:
  • 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade
  • 13th Air Assault Brigade
  • 21st Air Assault Brigade
  • 36th Air Assault Brigade
  • 37th Airborne Brigade
  • 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade
  • 83rd Guards Air Assault Brigade
  • 345th Guards Airborne Regiment
  • 196th Communications Regiment
In the early 1990s the active Russian Airborne Forces had five divisions and eight brigades, and a total strength of 64,300 personnel. Each division had a strength of 6,000 men.
The two main training establishments of the VDV were in Ryazan and Omsk: the Ryazan Guards Higher Airborne Command School and the 242nd Training Center of the Airborne Forces, which was formed in Omsk on the basis of the training division.

Early developments and wars

In 1992, during the fall of Kabul to the mujahadeen, elements of the 106th Guards Airborne Division carried out the successful evacuation of the former Soviet embassy staff from Kabul, Afghanistan, along with the Chinese and Mongolian embassy staffs. A paratrooper of the VDV who was involved in the mission became one of the first recipients of the title Hero of Russia. Several units of the VDV were also used to maintain order in Moldova after the Transnistria War, and the former Soviet forces in that country were commanded by General Alexander Lebed, an airborne officer. Before the withdrawal of the 104th GAD from Azerbaijan in 1993, its members had been involved in skirmishes with the local Azeri population, and some members of another VDV unit joined Armenian militias that fought in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. One airborne battalion in Georgia fought off an attack by local nationalists during the Georgian Civil War, and other airborne units were involved in helping maintain ceasefires during and after the Georgian-Ossetian and Georgian-Abkhazian wars between 1992 and 1993.
In the early 1990s, General Pavel Grachev, an Airborne Forces general who served as the first Russian Defence Minister from 1992 to 1996, planned for the VDV to form the core of the planned Mobile Forces. This was announced in Krasnaya Zvezda, the Ministry of Defence's daily newspaper, in July 1992. From December 1993, the Mobile Forces were to consist of an Immediate Reaction Force that could be deployed in 4-10 hours, and a Rapid Response Force that could be deployed in three days. It was expected that the VDV, which Grachev saw as the reliable core of the Russian military, would provide 60 percent of these forces. However, the Mobile Forces plan was never enacted. The number of formations available for the force was far less than anticipated, since much of the Airborne Forces had been 'nationalised' by the republics their units had been previously based in, and other arms of service, such as the GRU and Military Transport Aviation, who were to provide the airlift component, were adamantly opposed to ceding control of their forces.
The end of the Cold War brought up questions about the continued role and purpose of the Airborne Forces. With the possibility of large airborne operations unlikely, there were proposals to disband it or absorb its units into other service branches. As a strategic reserve, the VDV was also outside the control of military district commanders. It did provide a rapid response force that could quickly be deployed to conflict zones by aircraft faster than regular Ground Forces units. Another role of the VDV in the 1990s was also peacekeeping. In 1992 the 554th Separate Russian Battalion was formed from the 137th Guards Airborne Regiment and underwent training in Ryazan before being deployed to eastern Croatia as a peacekeeping unit with the UN mission during the Croatian War of Independence. It became the first Russian unit created for peacekeeping operations and consisted entirely of contract soldiers rather than conscripts. A new VDV formation was also established in 1994, the 45th Spetsnaz Regiment.
The Airborne Forces took part in the First Chechen War from December 1994 to August 1996. The joint army groups that carried out the ground campaign in the Battle of Grozny at the start of the war had elements of the 76th, 98th, 104th, and 106th GAD. They and the other Russian forces took significant casualties in the urban combat. One of the groups was commanded by the VDV general Nikolai Staskov, who was nearly killed by a grenade during the fighting in Grozny. The Battle of Vedeno, in late May and early June 1995, saw an airborne assault that was deployed by helicopter, and resulted in the capture of positions held by Chechen militants. In August 1999 a group of rebels led by the Chechen commander Shamil Basayev attempted to invade neighboring Dagestan, but Interior Ministry troops supported by the Ministry of Defense, with VDV units being the first to arrive, repelled the attack. The Second Chechen War from September 1999 to August 2000 also involved the VDV and was much more successful than the first war. On this occasion, all of the airborne troops involved were part their own army group.
At the end of the Bosnian War in late 1995 the United States wanted Russia to participate in the NATO Implementation Force that was deployed to ensure that the Dayton Accord was followed. The 1st Separate Airborne Brigade was established for this purpose, from units of the 76th and 98th GAD, and arrived in Bosnia in January 1996, to be part of Multi-National Division North. The Russian brigade, led by Colonel Alexander Lentsov, was under the tactical control of William L. Nash, U.S. 1st Armored Division commander, and the operational control of NATO supreme commander George Joulwan through a Russian general, Leonty Shevtsov, his deputy for Russian forces. Russian and American soldiers worked alongside each other in the first joint operation between Russia and the countries of NATO since World War II. The brigade participate in the NATO mission, which became the Stabilization Force, until 2003.
Although during Pavel Grachev's tenure as Minister of Defense the Russian armed forces had been reduced by 1.1 million troops, these changes initially had no effect on the VDV. But in December 1995 he ordered two airborne divisions and four air assault brigades to be put under the command of military districts, and when Grachev was replaced by Igor Rodionov in 1996, a Ground Forces officer, he continued to reduce the size of the VDV. In the end the decision was made to reduce the VDV to about one-third of its strength at the time. After Rodionov's reforms, as of 1997, the Airborne Forces headquarters had under its command four divisions, while all of the brigades were either reorganized into smaller units or transferred to the command of the Ground Forces. The four divisions that remained were the 7th, 76th, 98th, and 106th. In 1998 the 104th Division was reorganized as the 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade. The 76th Division was converted into an air assault from an airborne division in 1998, and the 7th Division also was made an air assault division in 2006, in addition to getting a "mountain" designation.
Several brigades were disbanded: the 13th, 36th, and 37th Brigades in 1996 and the 21st and 56th Brigades in 1997. The remaining brigades – 11th, 31st, 83rd – were transferred to the command of the Ground Forces from 1996 until 2013. In 2009 the 56th Brigade was restored. The reforms in the second half of the 1990s brought the total strength of the VDV from 64,300 to 48,500, and by the late 2000s it was down to 35,000. However, Georgy Shpak, who was the commander of the Russian Airborne Forces from 1996 to 2003, prevented the Chief of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, from making the VDV part of the Ground Forces. One of his successors, Valery Yevtukhovich, the commander from 2007 to 2009, was forced to retire early over his disagreement with the Chief at that time, Nikolai Makarov, about the Airborne Forces.
During the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, two regiments of the 76th GAAD and one from the 98th GAD were involved. The 76th was rapidly deployed into Georgia's South Ossetia region ahead of the Russian main force, the 58th Army of the Ground Forces, along with the 45th Spetsnaz Regiment. Elements of the 7th Division entered Abkhazia. Despite some problems with their equipment, the VDV achieved its objectives.