The Jamestown Foundation:

In the fourth year of leading the Russian Ministry of Defense, Sergei Shoigu has demonstrated a unique style of leadership, marked by routine snap inspection exercises, enhancing the image of the Armed Forces, and restoring the confidence of the officer corps, while pushing ahead with military modernization. Reflecting on the modernization achievements of the second quarter of 2016, and fresh from mass firings of the top brass in the Baltic Sea Fleet  Shoigu’s message is one of rising defense capability. While there are certainly reasons to lend credibility to his assertion that Russia’s defense capabilities are increasing, there are also grounds to be cautious that his approach as defense minister is necessarily having the level of success claimed at official levels.

A key part of Shoigu’s message of military modernization remaining on course was couched in the statistic of reaching “40 percent” of the annual modernization plan. In turn, this permitted the defense minister to extol the virtues of the defense industry, with a near roll call of the items delivered to the Armed Forces in the second quarter. Whether intentional or not, Shoigu listed chief among these achievements deliveries of a brigade set of the operational-tactical missile complex Iskander-M, a regimental set of the advanced surface-to-air missile (SAM) system S-400, followed by low-scale deliveries to the Navy, Army and Air Force. Deliveries to the Army mainly centered upon various types of tanks and armored vehicles, communications equipment, as well as ammunition. According to Shoigu, the elite Airborne Forces (VDV) were supplied with 18 units of the BMD-4M infantry fighting vehicle (IFV). In addition to boosting air-defense capabilities by providing more S-400s, he listed more modernization centers for repairing existing aircraft, new and refurbished helicopters, new unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms, as well as additional modernization airlift capability. The Navy saw the introduction of a new patrol ship, with its assets including up to 47 Kalibr cruise missiles. The Northern Fleet, according to Shoigu, can anticipate receiving new icebreakers to boost the Russian military footprint in the Arctic Circle.