I Will Answer This Question... Again.

One of our friends, understandably, asked the question about this:

We publish an excellent interview with Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, founded in 1997. Pukhov is quite closely affiliated with the Russian Ministry of Defence and is a member of the board of experts within the government of the Russian Federation. Pukhov in detail goes over the advantages and weak points of both the Ukrainian and the Russian armed forces and offers a sober view of the current situation with the Western weapon supplies to Ukraine. At 2,500 words, the interview is fairly long, but reads well and offers a unique perspective not typical to the usual Russian sources.

And the person asked a reasonable question--WHO IS Mr. Pukhov. I decided to answer this publicly. But I also want to remind everyone what I wrote about this very same guy and his fraudulent org CAST in 2019. 

Enter CAST, Moscow "Center of Analysis of Strategies and Technologies". The organization also known for maintaining a rather popular in some circles Blog BMPD which is an excellent platform for mutual insults and fanboys' exchanges on military toys. I communicated on some forums with one of the CAST "experts", Mikhail Barabanov, who among some people in Russia passes for "expert" in the navies, and who didn't serve a single day in uniform and has a degree from Moscow Institute of Culture, allegedly in either librarian or screenplay writing fields, something like that. Barabanov is known as a mindless and utterly incompetent herald of US Navy's "ideas" (without knowing anything of substance about them) and his main "expertise" is in memorizing types of weapons and some technical data and parroting mostly Western views on warfare.

Pukhov is the head of this "center" and here is his bio:

Директор Центра анализа стратегий и технологий Родился 16 апреля 1973 г. в г.Электросталь. В 1994 г. окончил факультет международной информации Московского государственного института международных отношений МИД РФ. В 1994-1996 гг. – слушатель франко-российской Магистратуры по политическим наукам и международным отношениям. В 1996-1997 гг. – сотрудник проекта по обычным вооружениям Центра политических исследований в России (ПИР-Центра). В 1997 г. учредил Центр анализа и стратегий и технологий. С 1997 г.  по настоящее время – директор Центра анализа стратегий и технологий, издатель журнала «Экспорт вооружений». Автор ряда статей о торговле обычными вооружениями и ситуации в оборонно-промышленных комплексах России и Франции.

Translation: Director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies Was born on April 16, 1973 in Elektrostal. In 1994 he graduated from the Faculty of International Information of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. In 1994-1996 - student of the Franco-Russian Master's program in political sciences and international relations. In 1996-1997 1999-1998 – Project Officer for Conventional Arms at the Center for Political Studies in Russia (PIR Center). In 1997, he established the Center for Analysis and Strategies and Technologies. From 1997 to the present - Director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, publisher of the Arms Export magazine. Author of a number of articles on the trade in conventional arms and the situation in the military-industrial complexes of Russia and France.

In other words, a typical good ol' Moscow boy who never served a day in the Armed Forces and has ZERO, zilch, nada background in anything related to operations and modern military technology and is nothing more than a typical political shyster specializing in rubbing shoulders with some military people in Moscow and gathering rumors and highly personal opinions. That's the level of Ruslan Pukhov's "expertise", this and fantastical (not surprising after being dumbed down in some French "program") "understanding" or, rather, lack thereof of modern West, let alone the United States. In layman's lingo--the guy is ignorant and still lives with the US mythology of 1990s. 

Pukhov, as are all his "employees", is a classic result of the humanities "educated" pol-sci boys and girls running into the brick wall of modern warfare realities which are so beyond their grasp that the only thing they are reduced to is to comment on comments about comments from some dubious sources and massage pop-media issues. Pukhov's speculations like these are risible:

I know one thing: unlike the Ukrainians, we started the SMO with white gloves. That is, we wanted not a single local resident to suffer. We opened the fighting as some kind of knightly duel. And this, sorry for the expression, is a dirty fight in the alley, where there are no rules.

These are the words of amateur, who never in his life saw any operational plans and has zero understanding how operations are planned, because operational planning goes 24/7 and plans are adjusted on a daily bases, if need be. But Pukhov, who saw armed forces only in movies, doesn't know this. As he doesn't have a clue about US Military-Industrial Complex but still continues to pass judgements on the matter he has no clue about.

Regarding the fact that they have some problems, I think this is standard Yaroslavna’s cry [old saying to express bad grief, a reference to The Tale of Igor’s Campaign] for most military industrialists. All around the world they love complaining that they have something missing. Let’s remember how nice they found it during the Cold War. All these productions can be quickly increased. If, say, the Germans run out of chips, they will ask the Americans for them. Americans will ask Germans. For example, did you know that the Abrams tank has a German gun? They bought a license from them and are doing very well. Often what we think of as American is actually pan-Western and is done in a collaborative way. At one time, the United States bought licenses for unmanned aerial vehicles from Israel.

Obviously,  neither Pukhov nor his "analysts" will be able to answer some critical questions about US Military-Industrial Complex and why most of it problems not being solved but are getting worse, much worse, but this is what you get when you were brought up and "educated" in the environment which is as far removed from manufacturing floor and military hardware as possible. If he still thinks that NATO can "quickly increase" production, he should throw away his useless diploma from MGIMO and start from attending vocational college of some serious production unit and learn basic facts about modern (I underscore--modern) military technology and WHY modern West lost the arms race. His other sophomoric psychobabble about "infantry" and "artillery" betrays the guy who by the age of 50 should recognize that all his education and activity is nothing more than being useless, together with his CAST, political shyster trying to sell his lack of any real skills and knowledge as "expertise". It is hard to face this reality at this age. So, NO, Ruslan Pukhov is not an expert in anything, least of all in warfare and all his blathering is nothing more than a BS of a  guy whose gig is up.