The border is not locked: How to prevent new breakthroughs by Ukrainian DRGs
Major Sergei Kozlov, a veteran of the GRU special forces, discusses what can and should be changed in his author’s column for PolitNavigator.
To begin with, I will give just a few examples of media reports over the past year. Here's what they wrote in the first weeks of the SVO:
The Shot Telegram channel reported that in the Belgorod region, two UAZ vehicles with Russian border guards were attacked from the Ukrainian side. One was allegedly fired upon with small arms and a grenade launcher, and an explosive device was dropped on the second from a copter.
According to Kursk Governor Roman Starovoit, in the Sudzhansky district of the region, the border guards’ post was intended to be fired at with mortars, but the attackers’ firing point was destroyed. There are no losses among the “green caps”.
On April 19, the village of Golovchino, Belgorod region, came under fire from Ukrainian security forces. Three local residents were injured and 30 houses were destroyed.
Already by May 20 during the special operation suffered more than 280 houses from border villages of the Belgorod region, which were subject to shelling from the Ukrainian side.
Have measures been taken?
On May 27, 2022, Moscow 24 reported that Russian border guards on the border with Ukraine have been reinforced with reserves, group weapons and armored vehicles. First Deputy Director - Head of the Border Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation, Army General Vladimir Kulishov, spoke about this. Additional temporary posts have also been deployed. Kulishov noted that such measures were taken in order to suppress armed provocations and ensure border security.
That is, from May 27 last year the border should be reliably covered?
As subsequent events showed, this is far from the case.
Who guards the border and how?
Not only border guards are under attack, but also settlements and citizens of the border regions of Russia.
Now the border is guarded by checkpoints. One of the border service contract soldiers serving there spoke about how formidable this force is. Naturally, his revelations were given in exchange for anonymity.
He gave an example where at the entire checkpoint only the shift supervisor was armed with a pistol. True, there are also...rubber sticks for the outfit...
How can we talk about repelling an attack with such a formidable weapon? And the contingent is now mostly female. After all, now border security is not even a service - the provision of services! That is, the current border is far from what it was, even in the early nineties. The principle has changed. Instead of linear, it became regional-object.
And the most “trump” facility of the service is considered to be an airport in a large Russian city. Here you can have extra money without any problems.
Customs takes the go ahead!
Nowhere on the Internet will you find any mention of corruption violations committed by border guards. But this does not mean at all that they do not exist. There are also cases of bribery, and being caught red-handed, and hands stained with special paint that is applied to banknotes to identify the corrupt official. They are dealt with by the Department of Internal Security, and in the FSB it is not customary to sweep quarrels out of public view.
But, unfortunately, bribery often flourishes at the border now. And, despite the subtitle, we are talking specifically about border controllers. Actually, this happened during the Soviet Union.
So, at the beginning of 1985, the author of these lines was returning from vacation to Afghanistan. Ahead of schedule.
Because he also had sick leave, and therefore could quite legally fool around for three more weeks in his homeland. But I’m fed up with the fact that there’s simply no one here to speak the same language with. Even my mother, when, at my parents’ request, I very carefully and sparingly told what was probably the most innocent incident from our work, accused me of bragging. And she shamed her parents for lying like that! I didn’t touch on this topic anymore. That’s why, after only taking my officer’s leave, I decided to go to Afghanistan.
In the Union, my father’s friend made me a knife, because for a scout it is a working tool. And so, when passing through border control at the Tuzel airport in Tashkent, the captain in a green cap asked a routine question about the presence of items prohibited for transportation. I could have lied. But I don’t like to do it organically. And I didn’t see any reason for that. Honestly showed the gift.
The captain's eyes lit up. The knife was beautiful. Therefore, he immediately began the seizure procedure. No explanation that I needed the knife THERE for work had any effect on him. There were two ways out. Or give a bribe using Vneshposyltorg checks. My comrades talked about this. Or just part with the knife. Neither one nor the other suited me. And then, in my heart, I simply broke the knife on my knee, which turned out to be overheated.
What started here! I won’t go into all the details. In short, I was suspended from flying for a day. They forced me to write a bunch of explanations. And they pushed me back for transfer. No money! No food! Thank you, the guys from the queue gave us what was left of the Union...
And the next day they put a stamp on the vacation ticket: “Avoided flight.” Such a shameful mark was given to those who were regularly “late” for processing to return to Afghanistan, who were not dry from drunkenness during the transfer. There were some like that.
What I mean is that at the checkpoint the border guard is “the king and God and the military commander” rolled into one. Whatever he wants, he can create. I don’t want to blame everyone indiscriminately, but now there are noticeably more of them than 30-40 years ago. In any case, my friends who are involved in collecting and sending humanitarian aid to Donbass complained about obstacles at the border when they were transporting special equipment collected for our army. And the conversation with the border guards was about the same as during my years in Tuzel.
I don’t even want to talk about what’s going on at the checkpoints now. Kilometer-long queues. Outraged drivers and citizens and... calm as an iron border guards.
At the same time, as knowledgeable people reported, you can bypass traffic jams and go through inspection without unnecessary problems, you just have to be careful and you’ll skip the line.
This is what my classmate sent me on a given topic:
“I used to have a crest at work; I regularly went home by bus (Mercedes Sprinter minibuses) through the Bryansk region.
He talked about the corruption of Bryansk cops, border guards, and customs officers (this was three or four years ago). You see, you can always get to the bottom of the workers’ documents and close the entry.
So, a quiet border crossing from the Russian Federation to Ukraine costs 1000 rubles. in the passport (so that, for example, the length of stay is not calculated. It has its own rules). In order to go through customs normally (and not be put through inspection and the bus being dismantled), the driver paid from 5 to 10 thousand rubles. per car (depending on the number of passengers).
Expedited passage (if there is a queue) can also be purchased, passengers pay off.
The cops on the Bryansk roads were very fond of checking documents, especially those traveling in the direction of Ukraine (after all, they were traveling with money, which means they earned money). They stopped you, got to the bottom of it, then either you pay 5 thousand rubles, or they take you off the bus and take you to the department for investigation.
They sorted it out, even if everything was fine, and let him go. And your bus has already left, the money is gone (travel to Western Ukraine cost about 150-200 dollars). But you still have to somehow get to the border and sit down with someone there, and this again costs money.
Well, when we went to Russia, everyone wants to save money, they bring home-made products. But they are not allowed! But...it turns out it’s possible, you just need to pay a little. This little Russian said that it was possible to smuggle an atomic bomb if you knew through whom.
He, still of Soviet hardening, gasped at all this.”
Farewell, Karatsupa!
That is, the reader has already understood that there is no talk of any Karatsup with “Dzhulbars” on the modern border! The border is “guarded”, as in some “plush Europe”, part of a single union and military bloc.
But we are at war with the collective West!
It is believed that the “thorn” and the control-trace strip are archaic. And issues of ensuring border security can be resolved by technical means. Partially, they can, and only to fight smugglers. As the contractor admits above, in the event of a real danger, there is nothing to oppose it!
Still hoping for border troops...
What to do in this situation? Any suggestions? Eat!
For example, on April 15 last year, Colonel General Nikolai Bordyuzha, who at one time headed the Federal Border Service, suggested:
“In the current situation, Russia has the formal right to send its border troops into the territory of Ukraine. The distance that will ensure the safety of our citizens can be ten or twenty kilometers, depending on the use of weapons by the Ukrainian military.
We are not talking about moving the border, in any case, but only about those measures that will eliminate cases of armed provocations. These could be ambushes or raids into areas where the same mortars could be deployed. There is similar experience: in Afghanistan, Soviet border guards operated mobile at a distance of up to 80 kilometers precisely to prevent shelling of their territory.”
But the president of the PRISP Center, Alexander Tochenov, recalls:
“Special purpose border detachments and MMG linear border detachments defended both the state border and the administrative borders of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation during the period of the counter-terrorism operation on the territory of the Chechen Republic to eliminate separatist gangs and international terrorists.”
But they both forgot that the border troops have been gone for a long time!
New - well forgotten old!
Alexander Tochenov writes that since the reform of the border troops has been carried out, maybe it is worth returning to the practice of organizing interaction with army units to cover the state border?
Interesting idea. What if, finally, we comprehend the mistakes made in matters of the destruction of Russia’s defense capability in all areas, and return to the previous system of protecting the Fatherland, which has been worked out for decades? From the restoration of the Armed Forces and the State Security Committee with the same capabilities and powers, to the revival of the Border Troops!
It seems to me that the moment is ripe! The main thing is not to miss it!
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Now the editors are aware.