Circling the Lion's Den

FSB Does Not Descend to Terror

Russian FSB Distancing Itself From 'War That Cannot Be Won' Against Terrorism

Report 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 Chechnya, all the same, with January urban fighting in Kaspiysk, Makhachkala, and Nalchik. This showed that the situation in the region is getting out of the federal center's control.

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 North Caucasus was promised. The system was built. However, it led to a surprising result: >From now on, the central authorities bear no responsibility for protecting the regions from terrorists. In addition, it is now pointless to criticize the Federal Security Service (FSB) for terrorist acts that take place. That would be misplaced: The FSB is no longer the body responsible for combating terrorism.

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 Moscow.

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 Moscow or from the MVD reserve. Before becoming GrOU chiefs, they served in the same republics where they are now responsible for combating the terrorists. In North Ossetia, for instance, the local GrOU leader was serving as commanding officer of an operational Internal Troops battalion stationed in the village of Kartsy (near Vladikavkaz). Naturally the colonel's name may be a secret to anyone else, but not to the population of a Caucasus republic, where information spreads instantly.

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 North Caucasus began to be rolled out. The 49th Separate Operations Brigade, formed in 2002, is expanding again: Internal Troops units in Nalchik and Nazran have been enlarged and there is talk that the battalion in Kartsy will also be expanded.

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 Makhachkala we were told that the local Dagestani "Alfa" (spetsnaz) was taking part. This seemed odd, because there are no Alfa subunits under the FSB directorates for the Southern District.

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 FSB Special Purpose Center, TsSN). Back in Soviet times regional Alfa subunits were set up in Khabarovsk and Krasnodar, and in the 1990s regional groups of the Vympel directorate appeared in cities with particularly important nuclear facilities (Arzamas-16, Nizhniy Novgorod, and so forth).

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 FSB Special Purpose Center.

Historically, it has come about that there are only two subunits of the Special Purpose Center level in the Southern District -- the Krasnodar Alfa and the former seventh detachment of Vympel, which was withdrawn from Chechnya after the first war and settled in Stavropol Kray.

As a result in Kaspiysk, Makhachkala, and Nalchik we observed one and the same picture: instead of spetsnaz operations -- urban fighting with the use of heavy armaments.

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 Caucasus, but to all appearances it is weakening it.

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 North Caucasus at present is the OKU, the operational-coordination directorate. But this is quite small in numbers, and no plans to expand it have been announced.

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 North Caucasus was set up.

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:

  • The FSB Directorate for Dagestan is headed by Nikolay Gryaznov. Experience of service in the Caucasus -- three months; before this, he headed the FSB Directorate in Kalmykia.
  • FSB Directorate for Kabardino-Balkaria - Sergey Ushakov. In post for less than a year. Notable for the fact that in his report for 2004 he exposed spies from the CIA and Turkish intelligence, MIT, in the republic.
  • The chief of the FSB Directorate for Ingushetia is still Sergey Koryakov. Many people in the republic consider him one of those to blame for the tragic events of summer 2004.
  • FSB Directorate for Karachayevo-Cherkessia -- Vladimir Shvetsov. In post since July 2004.
  • FSB Directorate for North Ossetia -- Aleksandr Tatko. Transferred to the republic in October 2004. His predecessor, the notorious -- after Beslan -- Vladimir Andreyev, was removed from office but not penalized: Andreyev became deputy chief of the FSB Academy and received the next rank of lieutenant general.