14th Guard Army

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The 14th Guard Army was part of the Soviet Army and was stationed in the Moldovan Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR) in the 1950s .

scope

The 14th Guard Army of the Soviet Union comprised around 9,000-10,000 soldiers, 94,000 tons of ammunition and an arsenal of 50,000 rifles, 300 armored vehicles, 128 artillery pieces and 7 attack helicopters, which were on Transnistrian territory after the dissolution of the Soviet Union . The extent to which the 14th Guard Army was controlled by Moscow or by local commanders at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union is a matter of dispute.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the 14th Guards Army was only nominally a army , according to their importance and purpose but rather an army of cadres . Its armament and armored vehicles were those of a fully equipped army in combat readiness , although its officers and non-commissioned officers would hardly have been sufficient for a regular motorized assault division . In a critical situation, the army should have been supplemented by reservists from the area. According to interviews by the army leadership with the Russian press, the number of reservists was around 60,000, many of them highly specialized military who lived in Transnistria.

The subordination of the 14th Guard Army to the Russian High Command

When the command of the former 14th Soviet Guards Army was transferred from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to the Russian Federation on April 1, 1992 , Moscow deposed the previous commander Yuri Netkachev and General Alexander Lebed as the new commander. Moscow succeeded in stabilizing the 14th Guard Army as a self-contained military association and in preventing this association from being transferred to Moldovan jurisdiction.

Lebed was instructed by Moscow to bring the army back under his leadership, but at the same time to prevent the Moldovan government from accessing them. On the one hand, he had to take the interests of the soldiers and military personnel seriously, but at the same time implement the CIS directive, which provided for the handover of the arsenals of the 14th Guard Army to the government in Chișinău . However, the implementation of this directive was rejected by the military high command in Moscow because the 14th Guard Army had performed important strategic functions on the southwest flank of the Soviet Union .

The role of the 14th Guard Army in the Transnistrian conflict

Both the now independent Republic of Moldova and the unofficial Transnistrian Republic (PMR) claimed the weapons and military equipment stored in the depots of the former Odessa military district . The lack of a legal basis under which arms and other military equipment could have been divided among the Soviet republics created a chaotic situation. Weapons were transferred, sold illegally or simply confiscated by anyone who wanted it.

Alexander Lebed, as the interim commander of the 14th Guard Army, was one of the key figures in the Transnistrian conflict . In the actions of the 14th Guard Army during the Transnistrian conflict, representatives of the government in Chișinău saw a clear sign of the direct influence of Russian interests on the internal situation of the Republic of Moldova. The Moldovan Foreign Minister Nicolae Tîu took the position at the UN General Assembly on October 8, 1993 that the Transnistrian conflict "was being used by the Russian Federation as a pretext to justify the continued presence of its armed forces in our country". The presence of the 14th Guard Army was "the main obstacle to the solution of the conflict" because the regime in Tiraspol was therefore drawing its support. Russia, according to Tîu, is ultimately pursuing the goal of restoring the "old imperial structures". At a meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Krylov in April 1995, Moldovan President Snegur demanded that the Russian Federation ratify the agreement on the withdrawal of the 14th Guard Army .

See also

literature

  • Graf, Kilian: The Transnistria Conflict: Product of late Soviet distribution struggles and disintegration conflict of the imploded Soviet Union. Hamburg, Disserta-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-942109-30-7
  • Gabanyi, Anneli Ute : Moldova in the field of tension between Russia, Romania and Ukraine. Federal Institute for International and Eastern Studies (BIOst) Issue 16 1996.
  • Schröder, Hans-Henning: History and structure of the Soviet armed forces. Reports of the Federal Institute for International and Eastern Studies Issue 54 1986.
  • Schröder, Hans-Henning: United Armed Forces and National Army. On the change in the security situation in the Commonwealth of Independent States, in: Osteuropa Vol. 42, Issue 8 1992. pp. 669–679.
  • Schröder, Hans-Henning: An Army in Crisis: The Russian Armed Forces 1992–93. Risk factor or guarantor of political stability? Reports of the Federal Institute for Eastern and International Studies Issue 45 1993.
  • Schröder, Hans-Henning: Alexander Lebed - warrior and political general, in: Eastern Europe Archive March 1995. pp. A 123 – A 125.