MOSCOW. Jan 21 (Interfax-AVN) - Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov started a working trip to the Volga-Ural military district on Tuesday.
"Ivanov intends to study the progress in combat training in the district and check the correspondence of permanent-readiness units to current demands," a source in the Defense Ministry told Interfax-Military News Agency.
The minister will visit a separate motorized rifle regiment in Samara and sum up results of work of the military inspection team in units of a joint-arms army headquartered there. During a week the team led by Lieutenant General Gennady Kotenko checked the organization of combat training in units of the army, psychological condition of the personnel, and materiel and combat support.
Ivanov is expected to hear reports of the district's commander Colonel General Alexander Baranov and other military chiefs in the district's headquarters in the city of Yekaterinburg on Wednesday.
The defense minister will also study problems related to the reform of his ministry's higher educational establishments. For this purpose, he will meet with graduates of tank, military automobile and aviation institutes in the city of Chelyabinsk and hold a meeting with leadership and teachers of the city's military institutes on Thursday.
Before returning to Moscow on Friday, Ivanov will visit a defense industry enterprise in the city of Ufa in the Bashkortostan autonomous republic.