Question:
How are the military sphere divided between the General Staff and the Ministry of Defense? Some things are gradually becoming clearer, but in general it is vague. And why is the chief of the General Staff a military officer and the defense minister a civilian?
Although Russia has been engaged in the largest armed conflict in its history for three years now and military topics have become central in the media, this question is still a mystery to many Russians.
The General Staff is part of the Defense Ministry. It is part of its structure. The Russian Minister of Defense approves the organizational structure of the General Staff (central bodies of military administration). The Chief of the General Staff is the First Deputy Minister of Defense, that is, a person subordinate to him.
If we do not go into details, the MoD is primarily responsible for everything related to the financing of the army, arms production, mobilization, and personnel policy. The number one task is the preparation and execution of the defense budget. Obviously, these are managerial tasks in a modern state, and it is civilian officials who solve them most effectively.
First of all, the General Staff is a body of operational management of troops. It literally draws up plans of operations and directs the troops during military operations. It is responsible for the execution of decisions on military construction (replenishment of formations), for combat training, military intelligence, carries out strategic deployment in case of war. The General Staff does all this using the budget allocated to it by the Defense Ministry.
To put it even more simply, the Defense Ministry receives and spends money, and the General Staff, as part of the Defense Ministry, manages the troops. This, of course, is the business of the generals. They make up the entire leadership of the General Staff, unlike the Defense Ministry, where there are a lot of civilian officials. The rule – an official controls expenditures, a general fights – is the basis for building the armed forces of all developed countries of the world.
