Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin held a meeting of the Coordinating Council for the provision of the Armed Forces

The Coordinating Council for the Support of the Armed Forces (AF) plans to take measures to reduce the receivables of defense industry enterprises, redistribute the workload between them, and also provide additional assistance with staffing. Also at today’s meeting of the council, they discussed the results of checking the validity of the prices of contracts for military supplies – according to the results of control measures, they were reduced by a total of 10 billion rubles.

Today, at a meeting of the Coordinating Council for Armed Forces, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin outlined the current situation in the military-industrial complex in terms of meeting the needs of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. According to him, during the work of the council (created in October 2022), the output of products necessary for the Armed Forces has been significantly expanded: the production of popular types of weapons has been launched, the component base in microelectronics is being saturated, the adjustment of technological chains for the continuity of supplies is being completed, and plans are being prepared to increase them. . For example, as the prime minister said, it is planned to increase deliveries of fifth-generation fighters to the Ministry of Defense by five times.

The problem remains the accounts receivable of defense industry enterprises. The Prime Minister said that measures are being taken to reduce it, without specifying, however, which ones. The results of treasury audits of the use of budgetary funds to finance the needs of the military operation have already been summed up – such control measures were announced at the beginning of the year (see. “Kommersant” dated January 18) as part of the return to the normal mode of inspections of the main managers of budgetary funds after the lifting of the moratorium in force in 2022.

Checking the validity of government contracts has led, according to Mikhail Mishustin, to reduce their prices by a total of 10 billion rubles.

They also spoke at the meeting about the need to complete the redistribution of workload among defense industry organizations and increase their production capacities. An intention was also expressed to help them with personnel – with technical staff and with specialized specialists. It should be noted that the authorities paid attention to the shortage of personnel in the defense industry back in March – in particular, the president noted that this hinders the fulfillment of the defense order.

However, this is a problem not only of the defense industry, but also of the industrial sector as a whole (for example, in the manufacturing industry, the shortage is estimated at 660,000 people). In such a situation, it is possible that additional “saturation” with personnel of defense enterprises, where, as First Deputy Head of the Ministry of Industry and Trade Vasily Osmakov noted earlier, salaries are higher, may exacerbate the difficulties with personnel in the civilian part of the industry.

Evgenia Kryuchkova