ON RELEASED AND DECOMMISSIONED MILITARY PROPERTY
G. P. Otyutskiy
The Federal Law ‘On the Released and Decommissioned Military Property’ is designed to define
regulations on the release and further use of military property, under the management of the
Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and other troops, military units, army formations and
bodies. Thus, in the domain of legal governance, the Law defines a critical domain of socialeconomic relations, with respect to the use of resources used in reforms of the military
establishment of the State. The need for adoption of this Law is highlighted by the fact that the
value of the aforementioned domain of social-economic and military-political relations is steadily
increasing especially with respect to improving military performance.
Both the realization and industrial utilization of military property is subject to legal governance, and
these spheres are frequently, in the economic and in the environmental and social sense,
characterized unfavorablely. Additional legal governance of the mentioned domain is defined with
this law.
From the point of view of social consequences resulting from implementation of the Law under
consideration there several aspects may be singled out.
From the economic point of view the importance of the Law is in the first place defined with the
following factors:
•
an opportunity arises to find additional material and financial means for the needs of the armed
forces, to carry out military reform and reorganization of other defense structures of the State.
•
additional economic and financial means arise to materially support the most critical scientifictechnical developments in the military domain;
•
as a result of diversification the economic domain additional equipment and property
possessing new functions for use in the economic and other domains will be developed;
•
it is important from the operational-technical point of view that the Law requires activities to be
planned in the project-designers’ documentation, allowing already, at the design level, to attach
a completed character to the life cycle of military equipment and property.
From the social point of view the Law is important owing to the following:
•
it outlines the circle of problems which have been faced by Russian society within the process
of re-armament and reorganization of the armed forces and other defense structures, resulting
in a release of military property;
•
it expressly defines the totality of the constituents participating in the governed process: on the
one hand, this includes the totality of the armed forces, troops, military formations and bodies,
and on the other hand, all constituents of economic activities. Regardless of the organizationallegal forms and forms of property; such a definition allows one to clearly delineate civil control
over the armed forces in and is also important from the point of view of the possibility of
systematic control over the effectiveness of compliance with the requirements of the Law itself;
•
additional material and financial means arise as a result of the law to solve of actual social
problems, in particular, the problems of improving social security of military persons, persons,
discharged from military service, and members of their families;
•
an opportunity forms to create additional workplaces in the domain of industrial production and
services, which will improve the condition in the domain of population employment;
•
a system is proided for wherin dangerous factors and possible factors of social tension,
accompanying the process of realization are accounted for; on this basis industrial use and
liquidation of military property; efforts are concentrated on the corresponding bodies and
organizations devoted to settlement of problems such as minimizing the risk of causing
damage to the personnel of the corresponding enterprises and population, problems of
environmental normalization, non-admission of environmental pollution including with
radioactive wastes, non-admission of economic and financial damage and in the number of
others;
•
the realization of the Law will, in particular, allow one to form an effective mechanism
preventing abusive practices in the corresponding domain. As has been shown in practice,
quite a large number of criminal proceedings are instituted against military persons for abuse,
mainly connected to processes of realization and utilization of released military property.
In the political domain the Law provisions will be of no less importance:
•
In accordance with other legislative acts the Law under consideration promotes bringing Russia
to the level of the requirements of a modern democratic society, and to a certain degree
contributes to demilitarization of the political and economic relations in modern Russian
society;
•
the law also defines and delimits powers of political bodies of the State authority both at the
Federal level and at the level of the Federation constituents and the local governmental bodies,
allowing added transparency for activities conducted and thus ensuring more effective control
over their realization;
•
the law will allow principles to form based on policy line and in compliance with this Law, in
particular, with respect to national financial policy;
•
the law will also expand the opportunities to enrich military-civil relations in the Russian
Federation and improve effectiveness of civil control over the defense structures and within
their specific domain of activity.
Thus, the importance of the Law and its social significance for modern Russian society is
unquestionable. At the same time, legislative formalization of the process of releasing further
utillizing military property turns out to be an extremely complicated legal process, giving rise to
possible gaps in the legal governing of the corresponding sphere.
In particular, it seems feasible to list in the text of the Federal Law under analysis a comprehensive
list of the domains used to release material and financial resources. It prevent the unjustified
dissipation of resources and in compliance with this, possible concealment and abusive practices.
The law may also help articulate and further develop clear social and economic reforms to ensure
the system of measures envisaged with the present Law.