Sergey Shoygu - Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Defence

On November 6, 2012 Shoygu was appointed to the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation when Putin ousted his longtime ally, Anatoly Serdyukov. During a meeting on Friday morning, Mr. Putin alluded to another apparent disagreement, urging General Gerasimov to smooth over relations with the defense manufacturing sector. Defense plants have complained that the top military brass too frequently update their orders for weapons and other military hardware.

“The situation in the scientific-technical sphere is changing quickly, and new means of armed warfare are appearing,” Mr. Putin said. “We should orient ourselves toward optimal means, but still need to maintain a certain stability. I am counting on you and the ministry to establish stable, good collegial work with our leading manufacturers in the defense sector.”

Some analysts on Friday concluded that General Gerasimov was being instructed to accept outdated Russian-made weaponry.

Defense manufacturing dominates large areas of Russia, in many of the places Mr. Putin counted on as bases of support in the presidential election in March. Major government orders buoyed economic prospects in many of those places during Mr. Putin’s campaign, helping him to win about 64 percent of the vote nationwide. Military spending has become a tense subject this fall, however, when the government turned its attention to the budget.

Aleksandr Golts, writing for the Web site Yezhednevny Zhurnal, said that Mr. Serdyukov had refused to buy obsolete weaponry.

“The stubbornness of the Ministry of Defense has turned into a political problem for Putin,” Mr. Golts wrote. “Serdyukov’s position would make it impossible to spend trillions on feeding the obedient part of the population.”

Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, said the $634 billion that Mr. Putin had pledged for military spending was unlikely to ever be allocated.

“Serdyukov was one of those who said, ‘If you don’t produce good and cheap weapons, we will buy it abroad,’ and that was a profound change in the psychology,” Mr. Lukyanov said.

Mr. Putin’s instructions on Friday, he added, show that “for the time being, the defense industry has won.” But he doubted that this deal would hold for long.

“They will try to pacify the military industry, maybe to increase their arms purchases, but they will not keep their monopoly,” Mr. Lukyanov said. “They will gradually get them to understand that the time when they could sell anything to the Russian state — it’s over.”