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FSB Does Not Descend to TerrorRussian FSB Distancing Itself From 'War That Cannot Be Won' Against TerrorismReport by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan of www.agentura.ru, "specially for Moskovskiye Novosti" The Lubyanka (Federal Security Service headquarters) is no longer responsible for failures in counterterrorism. The special services generals have shifted this responsibility onto officers of the internal troops. War broke out outside The official view on this is well known. On each
occasion, the special services claimed that the assault took place within the
framework of a planned special operation. After the tragedy of Ingushetia and
then Beslan, a new system for preventing terrorist
acts in the republics of the The desire to shift responsibility from the center to the local authorities and regional special services emerged even before the Beslan tragedy. After the June incursion by gunmen into Ingushetia, GrOUs -- Operational Command and Control Groups -- were set up in each region in the Southern (Federal) District. Last summer the president received in the Kremlin 12 colonels of the Internal Troops who had become the heads of the new subunits. The GrOUs themselves are permanent structures that, using combined forces, are supposed to conduct antiterrorist organizations. Combined forces means a motorized rifle company, about 70 people from the special-purpose police detachment, a team of sappers, subunits from the Emergencies Ministry and the Internal Troops, and the "heavies" -- spetsnaz (special-purpose forces) from the local FSB directorates. Each colonel received the status of deputy leader of the republic antiterrorist commission, thereby becoming the number two for counterterrorism in the region, after the governor. In the event of hostage-taking or an incursion by
gunmen the GrOU commanding officer automatically
becomes chief of the operations headquarters and is entitled to make decisions
without coordination with Taking into account the fact that the colonels' names are secret, in the event of a second Beslan nameless men will be responsible for everything. And there will be no grievances against the president, the Kremlin, or the special services' top leadership. An anonymous person with three stars on his shoulder boards will be responsible for everything. The system is organized in such a way that the
people's outrage can be quelled at local level. After all, the colonels who
were awarded an audience with Putin are not drawn
from the Internal Troops staff in This delegation of powers to local level, which is unfamiliar and even inconceivable in other spheres of policy, is hardly accidental here. We failed to find a staffer of the special services who could explain why, from the professional viewpoint, the leadership of an antiterrorist operation should be handed over to a colonel of the Internal Troops. Since Soviet days, state security has been responsible for resolving crises of this kind. Right up until Beslan, responsibility for the conduct of operations was borne by the chiefs of the local FSB directorates. Now this practice is at an end. The Internal Troops
have taken the key roles, and not only at GrOU level.
Last fall the manning levels of Internal Troops units stationed in the However, all these reforms did not affect the republic FSB directorates. Meanwhile in the Southern District, at least, the FSB spetsnaz certainly needs additional attention from the
center. When fighting was in progress in Kaspiysk and
Two regional spetsnaz
systems exist in the FSB, which differ greatly from one another in terms of the
level of training. The former is the legacy of the legendary Alfa and Vympel groups (now the In all the remaining FSB directorates, which cannot
boast the presence of nuclear power stations on their territory, instead of
Alfa and Vympel, the OSOMs
-- operational-measures escort detachments -- were set up. These are spetsnaz too, but formed from among physically fit agents
of the directorate. They are trained and funded within the framework of the FSB
directorate's manpower, that is, on the residual principle: The level of their
technical equipment cannot be compared with the Historically, it has come about that there are only
two subunits of the As a result in Kaspiysk, In 2005 the FSB budget was increased by one-fourth.
Nonetheless the Lubyanka is not only in no hurry to
strengthen its role in combating terrorism in the This trend became apparent even before the 2004 terrorist acts, when two years ago leadership of the Regional Operations Headquarters for the antiterrorist operation was transferred to the MVD. As far as is known, the only subunit of the central
FSB apparatus that is actually operating in the After the creation of the GrOUs
many people decided that the Internal Troops would only be responsible for the
strong-arm component of the war on terrorism, while the FSB would get down to
tackling its real job -- intelligence and analysis. In fact it all turned out
differently. Some six months ago in an atmosphere of strict secrecy a joint
intelligence service of the FSB, MVD, and GRU (army Main Intelligence
Directorate) for operations in the All information on the new structure is classified. However, Valeriy Dyatlenko, member of the parliamentary commission on Beslan, let slip to the mass media that the new intelligence service is headed by one of the deputy commanders of the Joint Troop Grouping. That is, once again, an officer of the Internal Troops. The impression is that, even before Beslan, people at the FSB had evaluated the prospects of the war on terrorism and decided to distance themselves from a war that cannot be won. The September tragedy only strengthened the Lubyanka in the view that it had chosen the right path. FSB staff policy:
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