WASHINGTON, Oct. 15 (UPI) -- The Russian Defense Ministry is accelerating its plans to reduce its armed service personnel by about 17 percent, or 200,000, in the next few years.

The original goal set by Prime Minister and former President Vladimir Putin was to reach that goal by 2016. But hard-charging Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said earlier this month that the goal could now be met in half the time -- within four years and by 2012.

"It was planned that the Russian military would number 1 million by 2016," Serdyukov said in a Moscow press conference Oct. 8, as reported by the RIA Novosti news agency. "Our new task is to achieve this target by 2012."

Serdyukov also announced that in the same four-year time period he would push through draconian cuts in the number of commissioned officers serving in the Russian armed forces, reducing them from their current level of 450,000 to only 150,000 -- one third the current number -- by 2012.

In the nearly 17 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, the Russian armed forces have shrunk by almost three-quarters in terms of their manpower numbers, from 4.5 million to the current 1.2 million. But Putin and current President Dmitry Medvedev have been frustrated in their efforts to dramatically restructure the armed forces and make them far more professional, better trained, better equipped and far more high-tech.