Military Crumbling, Says Russian Leader

Russia’s defense minister said Tuesday that the military is falling apart and that the Kremlin may no longer be able to count on it in a crisis.

Gen. Igor Rodionov, who was appointed to his post this summer at the recommendation of security adviser Alexander I. Lebed, painted a despairingly bleak picture of a ever-shrinking military that was poorly trained, poorly housed and even poorly fed.

Rodionov dismissed talk of a direct mutiny in the ranks. But at the same time he warned that morale was plummeting to the point where the military was becoming politically unreliable.