Juha Kukkola1; 1 Finnishn National Defence University, Finland
Discussion
The Russian military commissariat system is at the nexus of Russian civil-military relations. It is the main military territorial administrative organization responsible for the mobilization of the Russian human and material resources for war and deeply integrated into regional and local Russian society and economy. One of its tasks is to organize reserve rehersal exercises, including mobilization exercises, together with rest of the Armed Forces and civilian administration.
This paper examines the relationship of Russian Armed Forces and civil administration through a case study of Russian armed forces reserve rehersal exercises between 2019-2025. During this era Russian Armed Forces continued to enhance the training of its mobilization system, renewed after long hiatus in the early 2010s, in military exercises and eventually conducted 'a semi-mobilization' as part of Russia's invasion into Ukraine in 2022, and are now engaged in reconstituting and expanding their forces. As the source material consists of Russian language Ministry of Defence (MoD) publications, the aim of the paper is to understand how the Russian MoD wants the public to view the nature of civil-military cooperation.
The paper employs qualitative textual analysis using as a primary source the official journal of the Russian Ministry of Defence called Military Commissariats of Russia, published between 2019-2025. The paper asks the following questions: What are the role and tasks of the military commissarits regarding reserve rehersal (mobilization) exercises? How the commissariats cooperate with public administration and society, and what is the role of the latter in the exercises? How have the exercises been conducted? What do the exercises tell us about the relationship between the Armed Forces, public administration, and society in times of peace and conflict - according to the Russian MoD?
