RUSSIA: Chris Stephen reports from Moscow on why Russia's cash-starved armed forces are facing repeated disasters
Two years after the sinking of the Kursk submarine, the roof has fallen in on Russia's military with a new disaster - the catastrophic shooting-down of a helicopter in Chechnya. The fact that 115 people died with the downing of a single machine, almost the same number as perished in the Kursk, has shocked ordinary Russians.
A total of 147 were aboard the giant Mi-26 helicopter when it was hit by a rebel missile over Chechnya, almost double its maximum capacity of 85. The aircraft landed heavily, rolled and burned, with dozens of men trapped inside the burning machine.
Some of those who managed to scramble out were blown up by mines at the crash site, near the Russian headquarters outside the capital, Grozny. The tragedy happened two years to the week since the Kursk blew herself up because the navy had installed faulty torpedoes to save money.
Money shortages are the reason behind the scale of this week's disaster: a shortage of spare parts and fuel meant a single machine was used where most modern armies would have used two or three.
Predictably, Moscow reacted by falling back on a time-honoured tradition of firing someone at the top - in this case, the sacking was of the head of airborne forces, Gen Vladimir Ustinov. And predictably, the sacking will make absolutely no difference to the worm-eaten state of the country's military, the once mighty Red Army.
Once feared around the world, Russia's armed forces are still huge, well over one million men, but they are paid for with a defence budget the same size as that of Switzerland's.
From this single fact, endless disasters flow.
From the provinces come tales of battalions forced to grow vegetables simply to have something to eat. The air force is struggling to have enough airfields with proper tarmac simply to allow its fighters to deploy from one side of this huge nation to the other. The navy, having lied for two years about the cause of the Kursk disaster, has now admitted its incompetence.
And the rot has reached even the army's elite corps, the paratroopers. At the annual Paratroopers' Day in St Petersburg last month, events were so chaotic that a rocket fired as part of a demonstration killed a spectator. The same event in Moscow saw 200 drunken ex-paratroopers storm through a nearby market, knifing and beating dark-skinned market traders because they were suspected of being Chechens.
It was all supposed to be so different. In a last-ditch attempt to reverse the decline, President Vladimir Putin last year installed his friend, former secret service chief Sergei Ivanov, as defence minister. Mr Ivanov's task was to cut troop numbers from 1.2 million to 800,000. Two years later, Mr Ivanov has failed, beaten by a military top brass that may be useless at fighting wars, but is expert at defending its own bureaucracy.
"He \ has not been successful, everyone agrees," said Moscow defence analyst Mr Pavel Felgenhauer. "When he came in, he found the army had not 1.2 million troops but 1.35 million. He's trying to cut it to 1.2 million now."
The helicopter crash is a reminder of another grim date - the third anniversary of the Chechen war which falls next month.
Chechnya's conflict is very much Mr Putin's war. The Russian president was then only the prime minister when he launched troops into Chechnya to quell its separatist regime in 1999.
Mr Putin's rise to the presidency was built on a wave of popular support over this single issue - the willingness to talk tough with the Chechens.
Now it is turning into Russia's version of Vietnam, with reports of units supplementing their wages through robbery and extortion of the Chechen population.
"There are constant reports of shooting inside units, soldiers killing officers," said Mr Felgenhauer.
Every few months, Russia's military announces the end of the "military phase" of the Chechnya operation, saying the rebels are beaten. And soon afterwards, the rebels come bouncing back.
In the past fortnight, more than 20 Russian soldiers have been killed in battles along the mountainous border with Georgia.
The Kremlin is forced to feed the same few battle-hardened units into combat, with the result that these units take big losses. Russia's paratroopers have suffered terrible losses in the past three years because, time and again, their fighting prowess ensures they are thrown back into battle.
Rather than look inwards for solutions, Russia's generals are clamouring for an offensive, this time into Georgia, to strike at Chechen bases the Georgians tolerate in the Pankisi Gorge.
The helicopter crash, like the Kursk disaster, stems from a single cause - the determination of the Kremlin to keep a huge armed force. Only with a gigantic military, it is believed, will the country get respect from abroad.
The way out of this impasse is obvious, but possibly too great a leap of faith for Russia's elite to contemplate. It is for the Kremlin to consider other ways of attaining "greatness" than the ability to terrify its neighbours. Such as becoming economically competitive. Or, dare anyone say it, trying to ensure the Russian people are happy and contented.