Personnel shortages in Russia’s military-industrial complex (OPK) : assessing current education and employment strategies

The development of Russia’s military-industrial complex (Oboronno-Promyshlennii Kompleks, OPK) is central to its current and future ability to wage war. While a primary concern for western analysts has been the impact of recent sanctions on the OPK, a longer-term structural problem has been the chronic personnel gap facing the sector. This gap predates the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has become a major concern for the Russian government as it attempts not only to maintain, but to increase military production. The personnel problems faced by the OPK are a symptom of the wider challenge of modernising systems – both military and educational – that were inherited from the communist era. Central to the modernisation of Russia’s education system has been its reorientation from a supply-driven to a market-led dynamic after it was decoupled from the command economy. This has resulted in a long-run drift both in the number of graduates of secondary vocational and higher education qualified in subjects required by the OPK and in the uptake of jobs in the sector by qualified graduates. This paper will assess the impact of the broad range of educational and labour market policies pursued over the Putin era to re-establish a closer fit between the education system and the skill needs of the OPK, and locate these developments within theories of institutional inertia and path dependency.