Russian Ground Forces
As the Soviet Union dissolved, Soviet officials tried to keep the Soviet Armed Forces as a single military for the new Commonwealth of Independent States. The last Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union, Marshal Yevgeny Shaposhnikov, was made supreme commander of the CIS Armed Forces in December 1991. Once it became clear that Ukraine (and possibly the other republics) was going to form their own armed forces, the new Russian government moved to form its own armed forces.