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Article: Army without a country, countries without an army: Europe. (Commonwealth of Independent States)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- January 25, 1992
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As the world wonders how to help the ex-Soviet Union, its soldiers wonder how to cope with the hardest part of the country's break-up
THE army is the only pan-Soviet institution to have survived the disintegration of the Soviet state. it has a single command structure. Its 3.5m soldiers still serve in all republics, including the Baltic states. Its nuclear weapons are kept under unified military control. And only last month at a meeting in Minsk, eight of the original 15 republics agreed to keep their armies under a single command. Yet the army's disintegration looks inevitable.
At that Minsk meeting, the members of the new Commonwealth of independent ...