A law has been passed according to which marshals and generals will be able to serve after 70 years. However, for this, in each specific case, a separate decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, the President of Russia, will be needed. He will also decide for what period the contract with this or that military commander should be extended.
Thanks to this law, everyone learned that there is still such a rank as marshal in the army. That's just at the moment, as it turned out, there are no marshals in the troops at all.
So why are there no marshals in the Russian Army when the staffing table allows?
Rossiyskaya Gazeta addressed this question to the chairman of the Presidium of the All-Russian organization "Officers of Russia", Hero of Russia, Major General Sergei Lipov.
"In the modern army, the rank of Marshal of the Russian Federation is not really awarded now, although it exists in the list. But to understand why this happens, we need to refer to the conditions of its assignment. It says briefly and clearly: the rank of marshal is awarded to military personnel who already have the rank of general of the army, for special services to the Fatherland. Now let's remember the story: almost everyone who wore the marshal's rank received it for successfully conducted military operations in the Civil and Great Patriotic Wars. For example, Marshal Zhukov received it after the Battle of Stalingrad that turned the tide of the war. It is this scale of services to the Fatherland that corresponds to the highest honorary military rank.
Therefore, it is not surprising that it is not being appropriated now. We live in a relatively peaceful time, the threat of extermination does not hang over us like a sword of Damocles. And, anyway, it's good. But I have no doubt that if such a threat appears again, there will be people in our army worthy of such a high rank," General Lipovoy explained.
Recall that the highest available rank in the army today is Army general. In addition to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, it was assigned to Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and two Deputy Defense Ministers Dmitry Bulgakov and Pavel Popov.
In the Navy, he corresponds to the rank of Admiral of the fleet.
The last marshal of the USSR was Dmitry Yazov (died in 2020 at the age of 95). It is believed that the "title" ended there. The first assignment of the highest military rank was in 1935 (Voroshilov, Budyonny, Tukhachevsky, Blucher, Egorov); the last in 1990 - Yazov.
Ivan Petrov