A sudden check of combat readiness has been carried out in the National Guard troops since March 13, 2017, according to the official statement of the department. It is being held for the first time since the creation of the National Guard.
As specified in the press release, the decision to conduct the inspection was made by the Director of the Federal Service of National Guard Troops - Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Guard, Army General Viktor Y.
Created last spring, the Russian Guard concentrated in its hands full control over the sphere of security services, including state protection of especially important facilities, communications and facilities in the fuel and energy industry, as well as over the circulation of civilian weapons.
Now the Russian Guard includes troops (former units and formations of internal troops), as well as regional detachments of SOBR and OMON. In addition, the department was transferred to the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Security" and private security of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Special Purpose Center for Rapid Reaction Forces and Aviation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
The surprise inspection began in the Central Federal District and will continue in other federal districts, according to a statement published on Monday. Control bodies, formations, military units and subunits of the Russian Guard are put on combat readiness.
“Issues of testing readiness to fight sabotage and reconnaissance groups, terrorist and extremist groups are being worked out,” the message says.
In addition, during the inspection, the Russian Guard intends to work out mechanisms to strengthen the protection of particularly important state energy, industrial and transport facilities. In accordance with the plans, to strengthen their security, reserves have been created from special forces units, ready for immediate action.
“A set of measures was carried out to counter terrorist threats near objects guarded by troops of the Russian National Guard; tactical and special exercises were planned with military units with access to training grounds and training centers,” the Russian Guard added.
During the exercises, “operational, special forces and intelligence units of the Russian Guard, using special and armored equipment, practice practical actions to neutralize mock terrorists.”
A special control system has been deployed to manage the forces and means of the Russian Guard. At the central command post of the National Guard troops, “gathering, summarizing, analyzing the current situation and monitoring the actions of formations and military units are carried out around the clock.”
In connection with the ongoing surprise inspection, the leadership of the Russian Guard also appealed to vehicle owners to be careful when driving on the routes of military columns marching to training centers and training grounds.
In February it became known that the Russian National Guard was preparing a bill to tighten liability for non-compliance with the rules of anti-terrorist protection of objects of national importance. The head of the contractual and legal department of the Russian Guard, Alexander Shkolnikov, told reporters about this.
“We are working to tighten responsibility. There is a list of objects that are subject to anti-terrorism protection, taking into account their characteristics. We are developing requirements,” Shkolnikov said.
The service, headed by Vladimir Putin's former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov, reports personally. The leadership of the National Guard will discuss the procedure for interaction with colleagues from the Ministry of Internal Affairs with them independently.
At a meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in March, Putin said that the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ capabilities should increase through deepening coordination with the Russian Guard, and not through “the growth of [its own] security component.”
“In no case do we need the creation of a second internal troops, the creation of a second National Guard. There needs to be good interaction, which has always been there. I don't see any reason for there to be any glitches. As far as I understand, there are none, and I hope that this will continue,” Putin said.
According to the president, the ministry retains its own security forces, but the task is to maintain and improve their interaction with the Russian Guard.
An Open Russia correspondent accidentally witnessed training battles near Lyubertsy. Hundreds of riot police, internal troops and police officers imitated the dispersal of the “Moscow Maidan”. How will the newly created National Guard deal with mass protests?
What can you expect when you write a post about how there is no explanation as to where he got the money?
In the situation of a healthy person, you expect General Zolotov to explain everything, find reasons, and point out mistakes in your investigation. It will say that the registries made a mistake. That we calculated the cost incorrectly.
But in Russia we have a smoker’s situation, so National Guardsman Zolotov is silent, but: Navalny and FBK were wrong. They did not find several more properties belonging to the Zolotov family, worth 227 million rubles.
Not found:
His son’s plot in Barvikha near Moscow is 88 acres, 3 plots (1.2 hectares) of Zolotov’s son-in-law Yuri Chechikhin are there, another plot (29 acres) of his son-in-law in Kalchuga, his son-in-law has two apartments in Moscow on Veresaeva Street (total area 400 .9 m2). Another apartment (189 m2) of Viktor Zolotov himself is located in Gelendzhik.
According to the Unified State Register, in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region, where the 1.2 hectares of land declared by Viktor Zolotov are located, his full namesake owns another small plot of 277 square meters. m adjacent to a larger site. He is not listed in the declaration of the Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. The guard booth with an area of 1.5 square meters is also not indicated there. m, which, according to the Unified State Register, is also located in the Odintsovo district of the Moscow region. Ownership of a plot of 277 sq. m. Viktor Zolotov received m in August 2008, but the guardhouse appeared on the list of his property back in June 2002 - earlier than all the lands belonging to Zolotov near Moscow.
In addition, the Commander-in-Chief of the National Guard incorrectly indicated in the declaration the area of the apartment that he owns together with his wife. According to the state register, the area of the apartment is 171.6 sq.m., while the declaration indicates 178.5 sq.m. m of living space.
Thus, the minimum value of real estate for the family of an army general and head of the Russian National Guard is 940 million rubles. But in fact it’s even higher, because she assessed her part of the real estate at cadastral value, not market value.
So here's a fact: Putin's bodyguard is a billionaire.
Another explanation why the authorities hate our fight against illegal enrichment so much. In the beautiful Russia of the future, an official with a billion worth of real estate will not be appointed to the National Guard, but will be sent to the dock.
Over the past two days, I have been asked a hundred thousand times: do we know anything special about Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s former personal security guard, who headed the created.
Okay, here are a few touches that characterize this person well. (If you need a biography/profile, then the best one is)
1. Everyone who knows him personally told me first of all “ this is someone who will shoot without any problems at all and even wants to shoot" This is probably one of the important explanations for the appointment: both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense will start shooting (they also shot for Yeltsin), but everywhere orders will be needed, a certain chain of responsibility.
And here the distance from the thought “they went out into the street and will take away my billions” to the pressed trigger is greatly reduced and there are no weak links.
2. Zolotov is rich. Very rich. He will shoot to save his own. No ordinary general possesses such property.
List of known assets, evaluating them cadastral(not market) value of 120 million rubles:
- Apartment 171 sq.m. in Spasonivkovsky Lane, which Zolotov privatized in 2003
- Son's apartment 160 sq.m on Zvenigorodskaya street
- Son's cottage 188 sq.m in the village of Estosadok in Sochi
- Son's house 676 sq.m. in Barvikha
- Son's house 958.2 sq.m in Gelendzhik
But this amount is small (ha ha) compared to what FBK found. This is the first time we are publishing information about the apartment owned by Zolotov’s daughter Zhanna. The apartment was bought in 2011, it is located in an elite building on Lomonosovsky Prospekt and has an area of almost 500 square meters.
A square meter in this house costs more, so the entire apartment today can be valued at $5 million or 343 million rubles.
Feel it, families around Putin are buying apartments of 500 square meters. Their apartments are the same size as our summer cottages.
We add here another asset - a land plot with an area of 11,868 m2, which will be described below. Its approximate cost is 200 million rubles.
Thus, only the known property of the Zolotov family is worth more than 663,000,000 rubles.
The soldier “earned” quite a bit of money.
3. Zolotov is vain. For his home, he grabbed nothing more than a dacha. The same one that built the entire Soviet industry. He started under Lenin, served and survived under Stalin, outlived Khrushchev and ended under Brezhnev, for which he earned the people's honor: from Ilyich to Ilyich, without heart attack and paralysis.
So, at the former Soviet state dacha Zubalovo-2, where Mikoyan (mainly), Voroshilov, Shaposhnikov lived at different times, and our cardinal’s guard lives. Next to the old Mikoyan house, he built a new one 1000 meters away. Mikoyan is a sucker, he was embarrassed to do this and lived at 260 meters.
Archival photo of Mikoyan's dacha
However, it is clear why Mikoyan was embarrassed to build - next door, in Zubalovo-4, Stalin’s dacha was located.
…. the tenant talks about the sauna and the underground passage into it from the house. Naturally, he believes that this was done under the old regime. It is not true. No one would even dare to express the idea of spending government money for such purposes to Mikoyan. I remember how for 3 years they tried to persuade him to liquidate the boiler room in the basement and run a hot water pipe underground from another house. Coal dust made it difficult to pass through in winter. The father asked about the estimate, and when he heard the answer, he decisively said “no.” The next year the estimate was cut by one third, but he again refused. It was only in the third year, after the estimate had been cut by more than half, that he relented. Since the time of Zubalov, the kitchen has been in a separate brick building about 35 meters from the house. There was an ice cellar, which we brought on horseback from the Moscow River in April, it melted just in time for the beginning of winter - after all, there were no refrigerators yet! On the way to the house, the prepared food cooled down somewhat. Therefore, the zealous security, who had to spend the annual budget for “repairs,” many times offered to make a glazed, covered passage. The father never gave his consent to this.
This ice cellar still exists. Zolotov even proudly declares it:
Now, probably, Viktor Zolotov stores his hats there - out of the cold, on the street, they spontaneously combust.
The Zubalovo estate (it includes both the Stalinist Zubalova-4 and the Mikoyan Zubalovo-2) was handed over to the Ministry of Defense, having previously chopped off a hectare of land for Zolotov.
All for the property mentioned in the post.
Now the land there is sold at . In this case, the cost of the site is at least 200 million rubles. This is even without taking into account the historical value. for 2014 - 6.5 million rubles.
4. Zolotov personally resolves organizational issues of Putin’s corruption. He interacts closely with the people involved in it.
You remember, of course. It was mentioned many times that, constantly coming to the place.
I would like to remind you of our investigation "". It mentions Lanfranco Cirillo, the Italian architect who built Putin’s Gelendzhik palace.
Lanfranco Cirillo
It was to him that Zolotov’s son Roman either sold or donated his house in Gelendzhik (first line, excellent location).
My guess is that the house was simply registered in the name of a roguish Italian, so as not to tease people with such real estate belonging to the family of a “civil servant.”
A video of secret exercises of the Russian National Guard has appeared online, which simulate the dispersal of the “Moscow Maidan”. The recording was published by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's public movement "Open Russia".
According to the exercise scenario, a peaceful rally turned into riots. Clashes with the police began.
“An Open Russia correspondent accidentally witnessed training battles near Lyubertsy. Hundreds of riot police, internal troops and police officers simulated the dispersal of the Moscow Maidan. How will the newly created National Guard deal with mass protests?” - the message says.
Police equipped with shields and batons took part in dispersing the protesters. The exercises involved water cannons, crowd-clearing vehicles, a firefighting helicopter and other equipment.
Earlier, the American intelligence and analytical company Stratfor wrote that in order to protect itself from possible disloyalty of other security agencies in the event of a coup.
President Putin signed a decree on the creation of the Federal Service of the National Guard Troops of the Russian Federation in April last year. Such a powerful power structure has never happened in the history of Russia: it will combine the characteristics of a military formation and special services, and its strength will reach 400 thousand people. In addition, it is headed by one of the people very close to Putin, and the Guard itself reports directly to the president. But the Kremlin decided to go even further, and this indicates that they are increasingly afraid of revolution.
May decree
On May 24, Putin signed a decree that makes major changes to the military organization of the state. He orders the approval of a document called “Regulations on the operational-territorial unification of troops of the National Guard of the Russian Federation.” Its key section is as follows: “By decision of the President of the Russian Federation, formations and military units of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, other military formations and bodies may be transferred to the operational subordination of the district commander to carry out the tasks assigned to the National Guard troops.”
In Soviet times and after the collapse of the USSR, internal troops in some cases could be transferred to the subordination of the Ministry of Defense. The “external enemy” was of primary importance. To fight it, the Kremlin needed the opportunity to concentrate all military and security units in the country. In recent years, units of internal troops have been involved in every major exercise, transferring them to the subordination of the regular army. This tradition was continued after the formation of the National Guard. In 2016, in the Volgograd region, it conducted joint exercises with the Airborne Forces. Until now, the forces of the regular army have not come under the command of the internal troops. Exceptions occurred only during the Chechen wars, when operational command was transferred several times to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but this was done only to demonstrate that the “military phase” of hostilities was over. However, even then the operation as a whole continued to be controlled by the General Staff of the Armed Forces.
Last year's decree on the creation of the National Guard also said nothing about the possibility of subordinating the regular army to it. This happened only now, from which we can conclude that the Kremlin considers internal threats much more dangerous for the state than external ones. So dangerous that the Russian Guard alone (although it was created precisely for this purpose) will not be enough. Although, as Viktor Zolotov says, the number of personnel of the forces subordinate to him has doubled compared to the number of internal troops and is already approaching 400 thousand people! If this is true, it means that the Russian Guard is superior to the Russian ground forces in this indicator.
Enemy within the country
The May 24 decree means Putin fears an outbreak of large-scale social unrest that could engulf the entire country. In such a situation, it will be necessary to involve all units of the National Guard, as well as to involve the armed forces in performing “internal functions.” Two days after the signing of the decree, an article by the former Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation, General Yuri Baluevsky, appeared in the press. In it, he writes that the main threats come not from outside, but from within the country, and “the appearance of National Guard troops is a response to the threat of using technologies of so-called nonviolent resistance.”
Context
Putin clings to power
Helsingin Sanomat 05/18/2016Putin announced the creation of the National Guard
BBC Russian Service 04/05/2016Putin's guardsmen
Radio Liberty 04/07/2016 They started talking about the possibility of using the military against their own citizens much earlier. In 2014, at a security conference, Russian generals, wanting to curry favor with the Kremlin, declared “color revolutions” a new form of war. This idea appeared in a new version of Russia’s military doctrine, where modern conflicts are called “the complex use of military force, political, economic, informational and other non-military measures, which is implemented with the widespread use of the protest potential of the population and special operations forces.” It is noteworthy that the use of the protest potential of the population is equated to the actions of foreign saboteurs.In 2015, Defense Minister Shoigu commissioned the General Staff Academy to analyze how the armed forces should respond to the threat of color revolutions. Nothing is known about the results of this work. Apparently, army commanders would prefer not to send an army against their own people. Consent to the reassignment of units of the armed forces of the Russian Guard relieves them of responsibility for the use of force against their compatriots. But will it help the privates that it calms the conscience of the officers - after all, it will be the privates who will have to shoot at the Russians? It doesn't matter to them who exactly will give them such an order.
Kremlin army
The backbone of the Russian Guard consists of the former forces of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (187 thousand people). This is a real army with a military structure and equipment that is not inferior to the level of regular armed forces. It has its own aviation, artillery, tank and naval forces. But this is not just a new incarnation of the internal troops. The National Guard has become much stronger, in particular due to the fact that it now has special police forces under its command. Riot police (“black berets”), numbering 20 thousand people, are units specializing in suppressing street protests and dispersing demonstrations. 5 thousand soldiers serve in the ranks of SOBR, an analogue of American SWAT units. To this should be added about 170 thousand private security officers, although their power potential does not look very solid. The main task of the Russian Guard will be the fight against terrorism and extremism in the country. Among other things, it received powers to control the arms trade and the activities of private security companies.
The fact that the riot police and special forces have been taken away from the Ministry of Internal Affairs means that the National Guard will be even better prepared to disperse demonstrations. This is the task of the new forces: to suppress riots and prevent revolutions. They also received the opportunity to engage in counterintelligence activities and cooperate with intelligence agencies. As a result, the Russian Guard will become something of a hybrid intelligence service, special forces and law enforcement service subordinate to the president. The director of the Federal Service of the National Guard Troops simultaneously serves as the commander-in-chief of the Russian Guard. He, like the head of the FSB or SVR, has the same status as ministers and reports directly to the president. This is Viktor Zolotov, Putin’s old acquaintance from St. Petersburg, who was his bodyguard for many years and then headed the Presidential Security Service.
Shield and sword
The National Guard is Putin's personal army. He can use it without regard to the ministers of defense and internal affairs. The restriction that applies to the actions of the armed forces does not work here: they, even during war, are directly controlled by the head of the defense department, and the president only controls him. There is one more nuance: in the event of a state of emergency, the army receives freedom of action for a maximum of two days, after which it must receive the approval of the Federation Council. For the National Guard, this period has been extended to 72 hours. And during this time, social unrest can be drowned in blood.
The Russian leadership has high hopes for the National Guard, believing that undisguised brutal force will allow it to remain in power. Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the military-industrial complex, called it “the most belligerent military unit solving problems within the country” and added that the Russian Guard should receive the most modern weapons.
The task of Putin's praetorians is also to prevent rebellions. The Russian Guard will recruit hundreds of IT specialists and experts in monitoring social networks. As they say officially, they will be engaged in identifying the activities of terrorists on the network and preventing terrorist attacks. But besides this, they will probably search the Internet for participants in street protests and spy on them.
The Russian Guard should become a tool not only to combat street unrest, but also to intimidate the elites, especially those part of them that are dissatisfied with the wars in Ukraine and Syria, the conflict with the West and sanctions. At the end of March, at a gala banquet marking the anniversary of the creation of the Russian Guard, Putin said this: “We have new big events ahead of us. All this will require the involvement of large forces and resources. The volume of tasks will be very large, and a significant part of it will be on your shoulders.”
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
