“War Is Not Fashionable”: Activists Protested Launch of Rapper Timati’s Fashion Collection for Defense Ministry Novaya Gazeta
June 4, 2019
Three activists—Anna Etkina, Elisabetta Corsi, and Anna Romashchenko—carried out a protest action, “War Is Not Fashionable,” at the debut of Black Star Wear’s new collection on Novy Arbat.
Video by Victoria Odissonova. Edited by Gleb Limansky. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta
The rapper Timati designed the new collection in collaboration with Voentorg’s Russian Army clothing brand. Timati has promoted the collection as clothes for the country’s patriots, while spokespeople for Voentorg said the collection was based on values like “strong leadership, patriotism, attention to detail, and full confidence in each new step.”
A target is depicted on the front of the t-shirts in Black Star Wear’s new collection, while the word “Syria” is embossed on the back.
The activists arrived at the protest in t-shirts similarly embossed with targets, but the backs of their shirts featured figures showing the costs of the war in Syria: the number of children killed (28,226), the number of Syrian citizens killed (223,161), and the number of refugees (4.8 million).
“We made t-shirts that resemble the t-shirts in Timati’s new collection,” said Corsi, “because war should not be depersonalized. What he is doing is hyping himself using the war. Many people associate Syria only with Islamic State. But it is mostly innocent people who perish from the allegedly pinpoint strikes.”
The activists handed out leaflets entitled, “Say No to War-Based Hype!” They also shouted the slogans “War is not fashionable!” and “War is murder!”
Elisabetta Corsi ran onto the stage towards the emcee. A minute later, she was dragged away. Photo by Victoria Odissonova. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta
According to our correspondent, around one hundred people came to the launch of Timati’s collaboration with the Defense Ministry. Some took the leaflets and read them attentively, while others handed the pamphlets back or ripped them up.
Timati’s new clothing collection includes a T-shirt with a target emblazoned on the front and the word “Syria” embossed on the back. Photos courtesy of Buro 24/7 and YZ
Timati Shows Collection Designed in Collaboration with Russian Army Brand : Check Out the T-Shirts with “Syria” Logos Buro 24/7
May 27, 2019
Today, in the Russian Defense Ministry’s Main Building on the Frunze Embankment in Moscow, Timati showed the clothing collection his brand Black Star Wear designed in collaboration with Russian Army brand clothing. It includes cargo shorts, sweatshirts, jackets, and everything captured by the concise Anglicism techwear. The Russian rapper worked on the collection for over six months. The undershirts and T-shirts embossed with the logo “Syria” are of particular note.
Timati speaking to state TV at the premiere showing of his new clothing collection. Courtesy of Buro 24/7
“This is quite a historic event. Right now I’m at one of the most secret facilities, the Russian Federal Defense Ministry. And I want to announce that right here in the Defense Ministry, as part of the collaboration between the Russian Army brand and Black Star, the collection will be shown,” Timati wrote on his Instagram page on May 21.
Ekaterina Korotkova, director general of Voentorg, also confirmed the brands’ plans.
Black Star Wear and Russian Army’s “Syria” T-shirt can be ordered in advance for 2,900 rubles (approx. 40 euros) at blackstarwear.ru. Courtesy of YR
“Yes, Russian Army brand and Black Star really do have such a collection. It will be premiered at a show in the Main Building of the Defense Ministry on May 27, just as Timati announced,” TASS quoted her as saying.
Thanks to YR for the heads-up and images. Translated by the Russian Reader.
General Andrei Kartopolov has never worked in political indoctrination. Photo by Alexander Nikolayev. Courtesy of Interpress/TASS and Vedomosti
Defense Ministry Establishes Main Military Political Department
Alexei Nikolsky Vedomosti
July 30, 2018
As established by a decree signed by President Putin and published on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry has added an eleventh deputy minister, head of the Main Military Political Department of the Armed Forces. A decree signed the same day appointed as department head Lieutenant General Andrei Kartopolov, who had previously commanded the Western Military District. On Sunday, Kartopolov, who commanded Russian forces in Syria in 2016, attended the naval review in Petersburg with the president, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, and naval commander-in-chief Admiral Vladimir Korolyov.
Kartapolov graduated in 1985 from the Moscow Higher Multi-Service Command College, and his entire subsequent career as officer has been bound up with the ground forces. In 2014–2015, he was head of the Main Operations Department, the most important unit in the General Staff.
The new department subsumes the Main Department for Morale (GURLS), headed by Colonel Mikhail Baryshev, said a source at the Defense Ministry. It is a successor to the Main Political Department of the Soviet Army (GlavPUR), which traced its origins to the Red Army’s Political Directorate, founded in 1918. However, unlike the Soviet Army’s political indoctrination units and given that the Russian Armed Forces were depoliticized after the Soviet Union’s collapse (the law “On the Status of Servicemen” forbids them from involvement in political organizations), the GURLS handled troop morale and psychological support, patriotic education, cultural and leisure activities, and the needs of religious servicemen, according to the Defense Ministry’s website. The department oversees the military’s psychology and sociologists, while there are deputy personnel commanders, customarily known as zampolity [the Soviet-era term for “morale officers” or “deputy commanders for political indoctrination”] in most battalions, divisions, and units.
According to two sources in the Defense Ministry, aside from the work done by the GURLS, the new deputy minister will oversee the Yunarmiya (“Youth Army”) youth movement and other grassroots organizations. This part of the job has been transferred to the new deputy minister’s brief from that of Deputy Minister Nikolai Pankov, who in the early 2000s headed the Main Department for Personnel and Educational Work, which subsequently was reformed as the GURLS. However, at this stage the new department will not incorporate the Defense Ministry’s Department for Information and Mass Communications, the army’s mass media outlets, its historians, its cultural organizations, and other units that were once part of the GlavPUR. The statute of the new department has not yet been drafted, said another source at the Defense Ministry. According to a third source close to the Defense Ministry, establishment of the Main Military Political Department was partly inspired by celebrations of the centenary of the Red Army’s Political Directorate. However, reconstructing a similar department under current conditions is out of the question, although the word “political” in the new department’s name might offend many people, he admitted.
According to Viktor Bondarev, chair of the Federation Council’s defense committee, there is currently no unit engaged in political indoctrination among servicemen.
“We also need to develop a systematic approach to questions of morale, ideology, and patriotic education. Our western enemies have been doing a lot to discredit the image of Russia and the Russian army. We must mount a fitting defense against such attempts, generate a healthy counterweight,” explained the Federation Council member.
Since the greater number of rank-and-file soldiers and sergeants are contract servicemen [rather than conscripts], their education and motivation to serve must be overseen by trained deputy commanders, and therefore creation of the new department is justified, argues Viktor Murakhovsky, editor of the magazine Arsenal of the Fatherland. Unlike the Soviet era, however, they should not be equally subordinated to their commander and their political indoctrination officer, nor should political parties be allowed access to the army, argues Murakhovsky.
Valery Pshenichny, a defendant in the case of embezzlement at the Defense Ministry in connection with the building of a submarine at the Admiralty Shipyards in Petersburg, did not die from a lack of medical care. He did not take his own life. He was not tormented by abominable living conditions, something the wardens arrange for other inmates. He was simply tortured and then murdered, and his murderers did not even try to hide their tracks. This was the unambiguous verdict reached by the Petersburg Bureau of Forensic Medical Examiners, thus ruling out the possibility of suicide.
Novaya Gazetawrote in February about the businessman’s strange death at Petersburg Remand Prison No. 4. Valery Pshenichny stood accused of embezzling money from a Defense Ministry contract for construction of the submarine Varshavyanka. His company, NovIT Pro, was developing a 3D computer model of the submarine for servicing the craft after it was sold. In 2016, Pshenichny, who owns the company, suspected his partner and company director Andrei Petrov had stolen millions in funds from the firm’s accounts and persuaded police to open a criminal investigation. Petrov was arrested. After several months in police custody, Petrov testified the embezzlers were Pshenichny himself and Gleb Yemelchenkov, a deputy head engineer at Admiralty Shipyards. Allegedly, they had colluded and deliberately overstated the cost of the contract. Investigators determined how much the contract should actually be worth, based on their own calculations.
Petrov was released while the new suspects were arrested. Three weeks later, Pshenichny was found hanged in his cell. Before the incident, his cellmates had been removed simultaneously from the cell under various pretexts. The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service insisted Pshenichny had committed suicide, while his loved ones accused prison wardens of not giving him medical care after he had suffered a stroke.
The forensic examination was completed last week. Now we can establish what happened.
Don’t Pay Anyone Anything
Pshenichny shared a cell with three other inmates. At around two in the afternoon on February 5, 2018, two of the inmates were taken to talk to police investigators, while the third was taken to a meeting with his lawyer. CCTV footage shows Pshenichny was removed from the cell fifteen minutes later. He did not leave the remand prison. We do not know how long he was gone from his cell, where he was during this time, what condition he was in when he returned to his cell, and who was with him. But after four o’clock in the afternoon a guard escorted his cellmate back to the cell and found Pshenichny hanged. An electrical cord torn from a water boiler and the destroyed sneakers of a cellmate lay near his body. Prison wardens explained Pshenichny had tried to slash his wrists with the arch support from the sneakers, but had failed. He then tore the cord from the water boiler, hoping to electrocute himself. Finally, he pulled the lace from his hooded sweatshirt and hanged himself.
A graduate of the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, Valery Pshenichny was an engineer. He would hardly have attempted to use a 220-volt current to kill himself. The lace from his hooded sweatshirt was forty centimeters long. It would have been impossible to hang himself with this length of lace. And everyone who knew Pshenichny is unanimous. The last thing this strong, cheerful man used to winning would have done was given up and taken his own life.
“My husband and I were together for forty years, since our first year at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute,” says Natalya Pshenichnya. “I’d never met such an intelligent, striking, strong positive person before. I’m not exaggerating. He was confident in himself and the stance he took. He knew he was innocent, and he was not afraid of anything.”
An incitement to suicide investigation was opened. But then rumors flew around the remand prison that all staff members had been made to submit sperm samples for analysis.
Cuts and stab wounds were found on Pshenichny’s body. His spine was broken. Simply put, he was tortured. Forensic experts have identified blunt trauma to the neck and asphyxiation as the causes of death. Translated into Russian, this means Pshenichny was strangled with the forty-centimeter-long lace from his own hood. Tests showed it was not remand prison staff who raped him. Most likely, someone from the outside was sicced on Pshenichny to have his way with him.
None of the businessman’s intimates can imagine what the cause of this stupid brutality could be. However, before his death, Pshenichny managed to pass a note to his wife in which he asked three times not to give money to anyone.
“Don’t pay anyone anything,” he wrote.
A Russian Elon Musk
The work for which, according to investigators, Pshenichny artificially inflated the price, was completely unique. Nobody in the world had done anything like it before. In the future, it could have generated new opportunities not only in shipbuilding, but also for oil and gas companies. NovIT Pro had been negotiating with Gazprom and Rosneft to produce similar designs.
Friends dubbed Pshenichny a Russian Elon Musk. The talk was that he was not only a brilliant engineer but also a maverick genius whose risks paid off sooner or later.
“He arrived in Leningrad to enroll at the institute carrying a tiny suitcase,” Natalya Pshenichnaya continues. “He had nothing. No one helped him, he was a self-made man. At the institute, he was the most talented student in our year. Things came easily for him, but he was a hard worker. Intelligent, cultured, well-read, he could talk with you about any subject. He would immediately pick it up. Sometimes, I would ask him how he knew something. He would laugh and say, ‘It’s obvious.'”
The student with the tiny suitcase eventually became the owner of a major IT company. NovIT Pro occupies two floors in a building on a corner of the Moika River Embankment and Palace Square in downtown Petersburg, and it has worked on defense procurement orders for many years. Staff say that when investigators arrived to search NovIT Pro’s offices in January, they laughed at first. It was clear this was a fly-by-night firm, they said, joking the place had three desks and one and a half diggers. Then they went down to the floor below and were shocked when they saw a large engineering center.
Admiralty Shipyards
One of Pshenichny’s breathtaking ideas was the selfsame 3D digital model of the submarine. He came up with idea back in 2011 after attending the Naval Salon. NovIT Pro had previously worked on orders from the Defense Ministry for seperate units and parts of ships. But nobody had ever produced a virtual model of an entire ship. Technical specs are attached to each part of the computer model, and mechanics can have access to repair documentation and blueprints wherever the ship is deployed. But it was not this design Pshenichny had planned to patent.
As Novaya Gazeta reported, the contract was signed in 2015. But then Pshenichny went even further in his thinking. What if he could make it possible to carry out repairs of the boat remotely as well? After all, no one knows how far from the shipyards where it was built the submarine will be when it needs servicing, and the specialists capable of doing the repairs all work in Petersburg at the Admiralty Shipyards. The idea of mobile repair centers thus arose.
The mobile data center for the Varshavyanka is a room the size of two railway container cars put together. It can be quickly delivered to anywhere the ship is deployed. The technician from the nearest shipyard enters the room and finds himself inside the submarine as it were. He сan produce a cross section of the ship at any point and peer into any compartment of the ship. He communicates in real time with specialists at the Admiralty Shipyards, who see the same picture as he does in the stationary center in Petersburg. This idea had no impact on the cost of the contract. Pshenichny decided to implement it using the funds approved for the contract. He was curious.
Pshenichny was planning to patent the idea for the mobile center, but he did not have the time. On January 16, investigators came to search his company and his home, and he was arrested. All documentation, including the documentation needed to apply for the patent, was confiscated and entered into evidence. It is currently in the hands of investigators.
All You Need Now Is a Grave Two Meters Deep
“When they came to search our home, those men looked at my husband’s suits in the closet and immediately said, ‘Well, you won’t be needing any of that anymore,'” Natalya Pshenichnaya says. “The investigator said that now all he needed was a grave two meters deep.”
Pshenichnaya had suffered a stroke a few years ago. The doctor had told him a second stroke would be his last. Since then, Natalya had been afraid to worry her husband unnecessarily. During the search of their home, his blood pressure jumped to 250 over 140. She begged the investigator to call an ambulance, but he refused. The police asked her only to confirm whether her husband was really in danger of a stroke. Natalya found her husband’s medical records and handed them over to the investigator. Both she and Pshenichny’s lawyer Larisa Fon-Arev say these medical records were not listed in the search inventory. Moreover, during Pschenichny’s custody hearing, the defense asked the court to order house arrest for Pshenichny or release him on his own recognizance, citing the accused man’s health, but it transpired that the medical records, confiscated during the search, had not been entered into evidence.
The submarine Varshavyanka
It is unclear what happened to Pshenichny at the remand prison. It is clear he was tortured, that is. A wealthy man who was visited by his lawyer nearly every day was tortured. But then he was killed, and his killers did not even bother to hide their tracks, attempting to get off by making up a lie about his suicide.
What did they want from Pshenichny? Perhaps they were trying to extort money from him, because, as we have already mentioned, he wrote to this wife that she should not pay anyone. Maybe they wanted to force Pshenichny to testify, but in that case it is unclear against whom. As Novaya Gazeta has reported, Pshenichny could not have turned on anyone because he was confident the contract was clean, and to this day no new defendants have been named in the embezzlement case.
Gleb Yemelchenkov, the deputy chief engineer at the Admiralty Shipyards, was Pshenichny’s co-defendant in the case. Yemelchenkov had no financial authority and could not have unduly influenced the contract. He was arrested and charged in the case only due to Petrov’s testimony: he and Petrov had fallen out over Yemelchenkov’s wife. Yemelchenkov is still jailed in the remand prison. The term of his detention was extended to May.
Thanks to Julia Galkina et al. for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader
Defense Ministry to Take Delivery of 24 “Flying Tanks” for Testing in Syria
Inna Sidorkova RBC
October 19, 2017
In November, the Russian Defense Ministry will receive the first batch of improved Night Hunter helicopters from Russian Helicopters. The new choppers will cost the Defense Ministry at least 400 million USD. The helicopters should alter aviation tactics in Syria.
Russian Night Hunter combat helicopter. Photo courtesy of Russian Helicopters/RBC
For Syria
By 2020, the Defense Ministry will take delivery of twenty-four modernized Night Hunter Mi-28UB combat training helicopters, Andrei Boginsky, general director of Russian Helicopters, a subsidiary of state corporation Rostek, told RBC. He stressed the Mi-28UB was designed with its future use in Syria in mind.
The first batch of helicopters—up to ten units—will be delivered to the Defense Ministry in November of this year. Two choppers will be delivered to the 334th Center for Combat Training and Army Flight Crew Retraining in Torzhok, Vadim Barannikov, deputy manager of Russian Helicopters Rosvertol plant, told journalists on October 19.
“Currently, the Defense Ministry is the Mi-28UB’s only buyer. However, similarly configured Mi-28-like helicopters will be delivered to foreign customers,” said Boginsky.
He added that the coming online of the chopper’s combat training version opened up “practically unlimited” opportunities for improving the training of Mi-28N pilots.
“The chance to train on a real combat helicopter, rather than on a simulator, is a huge advantage for our combat pilots in comparison with their counterparts from other countries,” said Boginsky.
Boginsky declined to tell RBC the cost of the contract with the Defense Ministry and the price of a single helicopter. However, as two of RBC’s sources in the aviation industry noted, the cost of the Mi-28UB would be a “little higher” than the basic model due to the improved design and other features. According to AircraftCompare.com, a website specializing in collecting and analyzing information on aviation equipment, the cost of the Mi-28N ranges from 16.8 million USD to 18 million USD. The sum of the contract with the Defense Ministry for delivery of the helicopters should be at least 400 million USD.
The delivery of twenty-four Mi-28 combat training helicopters is Russian Helicopters biggest contract with the Defense Ministry since 2015, the company’s press service told RBC. For the first time in history, the Russian army will get its hands on combat training helicopters with dual piloting systems.
The Mi-28UB
The design of the Mi-28 combat training helicopter, the improved Night Hunter, is based on the Mi-28N night attack helicopter, which was added to the army’s arsenal by presidential decree in 2009. Its maximum speed is 300 kilometers/hour, its dynamic ceiling, 5.6 kilometers, and its takeoff weight, nearly 11,000 kilograms. The Mi-28UB is armed with Ataka-V air-to-surface and Strelets air-to-air guided missile systems, a nonremovable mobile 30mm automatic cannon, and B-8V20A mounts for C-98 80mm caliber rockets and C-13 130mm caliber rockets.
The main difference between the Mi-28UB and the Mi-28N is the dual piloting system, as RBC was informed by Russian Helicopters press service. The chopper can be piloted both from the commander’s cockpit and the system operator pilot’s cockpit, which expands its capacity for training combat pilots. In addition, during emergency combat circumstances, control of the helicopter can be assumed by the second crew member. The helicopter is also outfitted with a simulator for training student pilots to deal with in-flight equipment failure.
The Mi-28UB is outfitted with modernized integrated onboard radioelectronic equipment. The cockpit has been expanded, the area covered by armored glass has been increased, and visibility from the system operator pilot’s cockpit has been improved. The Mi-28UB has an automatic landing system. A state-of-the-art laser defense station has been installed onboard to defend the helicopter from heat-seeking missiles.
Why a “Flying Tank” Is Needed
The Mi-28UB has been added to the arsenal to adjust the tactics used by Russian aviation in Syria and other hotspots in the future, said the military experts interviewed by RBC.
The army lacks combat pilots, noted Colonel Viktor Murakhovsky (Reserves), chief editor of the magazine Arsenal of the Fatherland. During a speech in the State Duma in February, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu claimed that, as of 2016, the Aerospace Forces (VKS) lacked 1,300 pilots.
When the VKS launched its Syrian campaign, the Defense Ministry called up officers from the reserves and even introduced accelerated pilot courses for servicemen working in different jobs, such as aircraft technicians, Murakhovsky recalled.
“In this sense, it means a lot to train pilots on helicopters with dual piloting systems,” said Murakhovsky. “Thanks to the system, an experienced pilot will be able to prompt the trainee and take over the helicopter in emergencies. Pilots will be trained twice as quickly.”
The combat training version of the helicopter was initially designed to train cadets to fly the Mi-28. Previously, rookie pilots had to undergo initial training on stimulators or other helicopters, and then retrain on the Mi-28. This took time, argued Colonel Andrei Payusov (Reserves). The modernized Mi-28 will be used to train graduating cadets and retrain serving pilots, he believes.
The Mi-28 combat training helicopter will facilitate running young flight crews through their paces and nurture combat pilots, Colonel Sergei Yefimov (Reserves), a combat sniper pilot, told RBC. The Mi-28 gives the army the chance to change combat tactics, and the improved visibility and armored glass will help crews feel more confident in the cockpit.
“The modernized integrated onboard radioelectronic equipment will make searching, detecting, identifying, and eliminating targets more effective,” said Yefimov.
But in addition to accelerated training of combat pilots, the Mi-28 faces yet another task, said Colonel Sergei Gorshunov, senior navigation inspector in the Fourth Army’s aviation wing and the Southern Federal District Air Defense. In modern combat, it is hard for a single member of the crew to pilot a helicopter properly while tracking the enemy and aiming at a target, stressed Gorshunov.
“So the Defense Ministry asked for a helicopter with a dual piloting system,” said Gorshunov.
According to Gorshunov, the Mi-28UB can be used not only to support infantry but also to cause tangible damage to the enemy’s armored units.
“We might say it’s a flying tank. If the guided missiles are deployed, a couple of helicopters can disable from four to eight tanks,” concluded Gorshunov.
The first prototype of the Mi-28UB was manufactured by Rosvertol in 2013. The helicopter was put into mass production in late 2015, RBC’s source in the aviation industry said.
“The helicopter was tested for a very long time. All the tests have been passed, including tests in Syria. Now it is a matter of delivering the first batch,” he explained.
Translated by the Russian Reader
UPDATE. Russian Helicopters was listed in a White House document of Russian companies and entities that may be considered for further sanctions. The New York Timespublished the unclassified document on October 26, 2017.
The Russian National Guard Has Been Crushing the General Staff
Alexander Goltz, Military Observer The New Times
June 5, 2017
A calling card of a militaristic society is the tendency of the authorities to respond to all challenges by means of force, military or otherwise. The Kremlin’s fear of so-called color revolutions has materialized into a buildup of the resources available to the recently minted Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya), which was designed to quell unrest. Unprecedented powers have now been added to its resources.
“So that everything is just so” (Chtoby vsyo bylo v azhure). Exhibits at a trade show, organized by the Russian National Guard, dealing with law enforcement equipment. Krasnomarmeysk, Moscow Region, May 25, 2017. Photo courtesy of Anton Lukanin/TASS
“By decision of the President of the Russian Federation,” reads the document, “the units and divisions of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, as well as other military formations and bodies, can be transferred to the tactical subordination of the district commander to perform tasks assigned to National Guard troops.”
A New Kind of War
In both Soviet and post-Soviet times, the possibility was envisaged that the Internal Troops of the Interior Ministry, on whose basis the Russian National Guard was established in 2016, could be subordinated to the Armed Forces. After all, an external foe could have gained the upper hand over the army, and to repel it, it would have been necessary to concentrate all the country’s military forces into a single fist. Units from the Internal Troops have been involved in all major military exercises in recent years under the command of the army. But it has never been suggested that army units would be subordinated to the command of the Internal Troops.
There were no hints in last year’s law, which instituted the Russian National Guard, that army units could be subordinated to Guard commanders, for such subordination could mean only one thing: the Kremlin regards domestic threats as much more dangerous than foreign threats. These domestic threats are so serious that, at some point, the Russian National Guard might lack the strength to repel them, although, according to its commander-in-chief, Viktor Zolotov, its troop strength has doubled in comparison with the Internal Troops (which had 187,000 men in its ranks before their reassignment), i.e., the Russian National Guard has close to 400,000 soldiers. The president’s decree means the authorities concede the possibility of large-scale unrest that would affect the entire country. Under such circumstances, all reserves would be deployed, and the army would be engaged in performing their notorious “internal function,” something the military has avoided like the plague both in Soviet and post-Soviet times.
In 2014, however, at a conference organized by the Defense Ministry, the generals, wishing to oblige the Kremlin, came to the stunning conclusion that so-called color revolutions were a new form of military action. Thus, in the new edition of The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, published in December 2014, we read that modern military conflicts are characterized by the “integrated use of military force and non-military political, economic, informational and other measures, implemented with extensive use of the populace’s protest potential and special tactical forces.” As we see, the “populace’s protest potential” is equated with the actions of enemy saboteurs.
Loyalty Counts
At this point, seemingly, it was incumbent that something be done. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has on several occasions ordered several military institutions (including the Academy of the General Staff, for example) to carry out research on how the Armed Forces should react to such threats, but the outcomes of this research are still unknown. Likely as not, the officers corps did not wish to dirty its hands by planning how to deploy troops against its own people. All they could force themselves to do was come up with the idea of subordinating the army to the Russian National Guard, thus shifting responsibility to it for using force on the streets of Russia’s cities. Yet the commanders of the army units assigned to the Russian National Guard will themselves have to decide, when push comes to shove, whose orders to carry out and how to carry them out.
Last summer, units of the Russian National Guard and the Airborne Forces engaged in joint exercises in Volgograd Region. Servicemen from two brigades of the Russian National Guard and the Special Ops Centers, as well the Fifty-Sixth Airborne Assault Brigade of the Airborne Forces were involved in the exercises: a total of four thousand men. However, a member of the Defense Ministry, Lieutenant General Andrei Kholzakov, Deputy Commander of the Airborne Forces, was in charge of the maneuvers. The general explained then that the exercises were the first to take place “after the reformation of the Internal Troops. We have been working out issues of interaction to understand how to cooperate in the future.” The reason why, during the initial stages, army generals were tapped to command the exercises is obvious. Their colleagues in the Russian National Guard did not have the know-how and experience to plan large-scale operations. But now, the president’s decree would have us think, the Kremlin favors loyalty over knowledge and ability, and it has subordinated the army to the police. By hook or by crook, the army is being prepared to put down its own people.
Russian National Guard Units in Russia (Districts and Cities Where Units Are Deployed. Source: www.rosgvard.ru
Super Law Enforcement Authority
The authorities, however, have not been hiding what jobs, the most important, as they imagine, the Russian National Guard will have to take on for the state. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin quite seriously dubbed it the “most belligerent military unity solving problems inside the country.” Even so, he underscored that the “Russian National Guard must be armed to the teeth, and not just to the teeth, but with the highest-quality weapons.”
True, the Guard itself is steadily becoming a super law enforcement body, a secret service backed up by thousands of troops. Relatively recently, for example, it transpired that the Guard was establishing a service for monitoring social networks on the internet.
“We see today the areas where we would like to develop. IT is in first place. […] The Russian National Guard plans to train IT specialists and specialists for monitoring social networks,” said Colonel General Sergei Melikov, deputy commander of the Russian National Guard.
According to Melikov, “such training groups” were already functioning at the Perm Military Institute.
Russian National Guardsmen during combat training. Moscow Region, February 2017. Photo courtesy of Dmitry Korotayev/Kommersant
General Melikov claimed the new unit would tasked only with tracking terrorists and preventing their attacks. But it is more likely the cyber-guardsmen will identify groups of “rebels,” including people planning to take part in protest rallies.
In the meantime, the media has reported on the Russian National Guard’s intentions to obtain permission to perform investigative work, thus establishing their own version of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department (MUR). So far, high-ranking officials in the Guard have decisively denied this. However, General Melikov revealed that the Russian National Guard would train the appropriate specialists if the authorities decided to give them these powers.
Finally, the top brass has consistently been involved in guiding the National Guardsmen ideologically. It would seem their ideal is the NKVD, for the authorities have not limited themselves to naming an tactical division of the Guard after Iron Felix. So, in the very near future, Dzerzhinsky’s name will be resurrected, incorporated as part of the name of the Guard’s Saratov Institute. The Guard’s units and divisions are supposed to be given the insignias and honorary titles of glorious predecessors. Uniformed historians have been tasked with finding something heroic about the NKVD’s troops. It is curious what they will write about the involvement of these “glorious warriors” in wholesale deportations and whether they will use these “heroic examples” to educate the Guardsmen.
The Potential Enemy
For the time being, the Russian National Guard’s commanders insist that its main objective is confronting terrorists and armed gangs, underplaying its role in dispersing civilians. But the same day the president’s decree was published, May 20, an article with the byline of Yuri Baluyevsky was published in the Independent Military Observer. In the recent past, Baluyevsky had been chief of the Armed Forces General Staff; he was later deputy secretary of the Security Council, and is now an adviser to the Russian National Guard’s commander-in-chief. His article is notable for its frankness.
“As a military man,” writes Baluyevsky, “I compare our country to a target. The center is the leadership and political elite. The second circle is the economy, the third, infrastructure, the fourth, the populace, and the fifth, the Armed Forces. Currently, it is not the Armed Forces who are being attacked, but the civilian population, since, compared with the military, it is the segment of society most vulnerable to the forces and methods of psychological warfare. The scenario for how events unfold is known from the color revolutions. The organizers get millions of people shouting ‘Down with the government!’ to take to the streets. The authorities start to lose control. Next come sanctions and an integrated attack on the country’s economy. The armed forces don’t know what to do. All of this leads the country to collapse. This is how a modern war could unfold. The emergence of the National Guard is a response to the challenge to our society, to the threat posed by the use of so-called nonviolent resistance, which it would be more accurate to call a ‘color revolution.'”
Thus, society’s allegedly least responsible segment, the civilian population of one’s own country, has been transformed into a potential enemy against whom the Russian National Guard and the army will be allowed to use force. They will be allowed to use military force against their own people.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade AKH for the heads-up
In the event of war, these tasty Petersburg pastries will be mobilized by the Defense Ministry. Photo courtesy of checkinandgo.ru
More charming news from the Supah Powah, which is trying hard to frighten its already weary, jittery people into total submission while also “sending the west a firm message.”
Quoting regime pipe organ Izvestia, RBC “reports” that if martial law is declared, the Defense Ministry could mobilize a number of companies regardless of their ownership structure. The rules for mobilization were amended after the Caucasus 2016 military exercises. The rules apply to private bakeries, tailors, agricultural holdings, repair services, and logistics companies.
Khvoyny is located south of Krasnoye Selo, an outlying suburb of St. Petersburg
A Town’s Story
Irina Tumakova Fontanka.ru
September 14, 2016
This is Saint Petersburg too, but there is no medical clinic, no pharmacy, no legally operating shops, and no eateries here. The roofs are hastily under repair in time for the elections, but the trash is not hauled away. Fontanka.ru took a look at how this Petersburg gets along.
The letter was an invitation to journey, as the old rubric in the newspapers used to be called. Fontanka.ru got a call from a woman who introduced herself, requested we tell no one she had called, and complained about her unbearable life. She said her life and the lives of her two and a half thousand neighbors were unbearable.
“Just don’t tell anyone I called you,” she repeated, switching to a whisper.
We will honor Nina Petrovna’s request, although I never did figure out whom she was hiding from. (Nina Petrovna is not her real name.) When I came to visit her, when she gave me a tour of her town’s horrors, we were gradually joined by neighbors and even a former municipal councilman who had a roll of glossy paper tucked under his arm. I would nod, rustle my notepad, and feel like a high commission, registering people’s complaints. The procession would expand, and every passerby who did not join it would happily greet us. That is right, they would say, spell them all out in the newspaper. “They” were the authorities who had reduced the whole town to misery. Towards the end, everyone asked me in unison not to identify them. They had secrecy down pat here. This was not surprising: Khvoyny is the former military garrison town L-237. So Nina Petrovna is a composite character.
Nowadays, the place is an exclave of Petersburg known as Khvoyny (“Coniferous”). Formally part of Petersburg’s outlying Krasnoye Selo district, all the local residents are registered as residents of Petersburg. In practical terms, this village of two and a half thousand residents is stuck between two districts of the surrounding Leningrad Region, Gatchina and Lomonosov. Khvoyny has ceased being a military town, but has still not become a civilian one.
“No one needs us!” Nina Petrovna bitterly informs me. She has spelled out what the trouble is in four words.
Nearly all of Khvoyny’s residents are retired army officers, officers’ wives, and officers’ children. In the early 1960s, they were allocated flats in this spot, which was considered a paradise. There are coniferous trees here, but even more hardwoods. The three-story brick residential buildings are almost in the midst the woods. I arrived here from downtown Petersburg and almost suffered oxygen shock. Here and there, you need to take a forest path to get from one building to another. Since construction of the town was completed in the 1960s, many of the buildings are Stalin-era houses with three-meter-high ceilings. On the upper floors, the ceilings have cracked in places and are covered in mold, because the roofs have not been repaired since the sixties, apparently. But now metallic structures tower next to the buildings: the roofs are rapidly undergoing major repairs.
“Oh, yes,” Nina Petrovna nods. “It was a miracle we were put on the capital renovations program. We have been promised our roofs will be fixed by September 18 [Russian election day this year—TRR].”
Previously, the only way to get into L-237 was through a checkpoint at the invitation of a local resident, but all that remains of the checkpoint are iron gates always left open. Before Nina Petrovna can tell me about the town’s hardships, I notice evenly laid asphalt in the passages between the houses, and cheerful flowerbeds and neat playgrounds in the courtyards. There are even public exercise machines next to the school. So my first impression of Khvoyny is that only profoundly ungrateful and picky people could complain about it.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” says Nina Petrovna, waving her hand. “We planted the flowers ourselves. And our municipal councilman pushed through the playgrounds and the asphalt. What he managed to do when he was on the council is left. But then someone from Krasnoye Selo was elected instead of him. No one deals with our problems anymore.”
We won’t be coming back to how the former municipal councilman “pushed” those things through. The story looks shady, and the so-called ex-councilman absolutely refused to share the paperwork with us. The problem is that, formally speaking, everything in Khvoyny, including the land, still belongs to the Defense Ministry, and it is not quite clear on what grounds the municipal powers that be were trying to build a garden town, complete with asphalt and exercise machines. But the residents of the former L-237 are terribly worried that the asphalt and the playgrounds and the exercise machines and even the half-repaired roofs will all be taken away. Just as the swimming pool, the bathhouse, the cafeteria, the clinic, the pharmacy, and the shops have already been taken away. Khvoyny once had all these amenities.
“The swimming pool is still there,” Nina Petrovna corrects me. “I don’t know what is in there now, but the military garrison has put it under guard, and someone stops by there from time to time.”
The medical clinic is also still standing. I am led there as if it were a local landmark.
The sign reads, “Working Hours of the Khvoyny Village Medical Clinic.”
“It used to be a hospital branch,” Nina Petrovna says. “It had everything: an X-ray machine, a lab, and complete staff of doctors. You could undergo physiotherapy here.”
The door has been wide open for many years, and you can walk in. Chair legs covered with a layer of dust lie in the hallways. Books are strewn about, and computer debris crunches underfoot. When the military moved out, it looks as if they did all they could to make sure the enemy would not get their hands on these precious things. The stench testifies to the fact the building is now used as a public toilet.
Their Krasnoye Selo residence permits mean the residents of Khvoinyi are assigned to the Krasnoye Selo Medical Clinic. But, says Nina Petrovna, it takes something like an hour to get there on the minibus. But to say that the residents of Khvoyny have been left without medical care would be shamelessly slandering the authorities.
“The outpatient clinic and the district doctor come three times a week,” Nina Petrovna admits.
The “outpatient clinic” is a minivan. The doctors sees patients right in the van. The patients queue up outside the van.
“If it’s raining, we stand under umbrellas,” sighs Nina Petrovna. “Can you imagine what it’s like in winter?”
Once, she tells me, a neighbor summoned an ambulance from Krasnoye Selo. It arrived the next day.
Another building the residents of Khvoyny like to show off is the former cafeteria. The military, apparently, retreated from this building in keeping with all the regulations, trashing everything they could not take with them. The cafeteria’s doors are securely locked, so visitors get in by climbing through a shattered window.
A wise man once conversed with the people via a TV screen. A old man complained to him about awful roads, roads on which it was impossible to drive a car. The wise man’s reply was reasonable. Why, he said, do you need a car if there are no roads? It is the same thing with the residents of Khvoyny. They don’t have a pharmacy, but why do they need a pharmacy if they don’t have a medical clinic, either?
“People who have cars are alright,” sighs Nina Petrovna. “But it’s so much trouble going by bus every time to buy medications.”
But residents have to take the bus in any case because neither are there any shops in Khvoyny. There is a building in town. The sign on it says, “Store.” The windows are boarded up.
“People from one of the big retailers came here, either Pyatyorochka or Magnit,” Nina Petrovna repeats a rumor. “The military demanded such high rent they left as soon as they arrived!”
“Store”
This story of how the military “demanded” high rent conceals, apparently, the reason why there no shops and no pharmacy in Khvoyny. All the buildings are still the property of the Defense Ministry. Local residents assure me the process of transferring them to the city has been going on for fifteen years or so. The ex-councilman, mentioned earlier, knows something about this, but once again he does not want to show me the paperwork. He says the problem will be resolved quite soon.
For now, though, anyone who wants to open a shop or pharmacy in Khvoyny has to contact the military about the rent. Apparently, such people do reach out to them. And certain people seemingly manage to luck out and agree on the rent. Products are sold in a cubbyhole in the boarded-up store. In a kiosk on the next street over, an enterprising fellow sells milk, bread, vodka, sausages, and other edibles that he ships in from Petersburg. An old woman bakes him pasties to sell. So the kiosk doubles, as it were, as a “branch” of the former cafeteria. All these businesses seem to have settled with the military on terms that are not suitable for large retail chains and even less so for pharmacies. But quality control of the products is as reliable as can be. It is implemented not by some consumer watchdog agency, but by the consumers themselves. If push comes to shove, they can beat up the retailers.
Another sight to see in Khvoyny is the rubbish dump on the outskirts of town. There used to be a path here that people took when going shopping in the neighboring village of Taitsy. When the dump appeared, they had to alter their route, because the dumpsters are hauled away, at best, on the eve of big holidays, and the perpetual puddle near the dump is so large that, at all other times, residents have to toss their rubbish into dumpster from a distance of three meters. You can see, however, that accuracy is not the principal virtue of Khvoyny’s residents.
If you think the military are so ruthless only to the civilian population, think again. This accusation completely falls away when you see their own dormitory. It is inhabited by those in Khvoyny who do not have their own flats. The garrison continues to operate, and despite the peacetime conversion I have described, the garrison’s current headquarters is still located in the town. Soldiers and officers assigned to the garrison are housed in the dormitory as well. If you are lucky, the ceiling in your room will leak only in one spot. At most, you will need to put two buckets on the floor to catch the water. And it is not so terrible there is one toilet per floor. As we recall, the former medical clinic functions as a public toilet.
My tour of Khvoyny lasted three hours. During those three hours, the hard lives of Khvoyny’s residents and the total neglect they suffer at the hands of the powers that be filled me with compassion for them. We said our goodbyes next to an imported car with a plush toy dog in the back window. A St. George’s Ribbon was tied round the doggy’s neck. Before leaving, I decided to have a look at the glossy scroll the ex-councilman had been carrying throughout my tour. It turned out to be a campaign poster for country’s main political party. He had to hang it on wall to do his part for the campaign. I asked the residents of Khvoyny whether they were going to vote for this party.
“Of course!” said Nina Petrovna firmly, her lips pursed. “I don’t see an alternative. Otherwise, there will be war. The country will divided up, and the Americans will grab all our riches.”
I left town with a feeling of joy. It was a good thing, after all, the residents of Khvoyny would be hanging on to their riches.
All photos by Irina Tumakova. Map images courtesy of OpenStreetMap and Google Maps. Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade VZ for the heads-up
The slogans on the women’s t-shirts read, “28,226 dead children,” “War is an unjust and foolish business © Leo Tolstoy,” “4.8 million refugees from Syria.” Photo by Victoria Odissonovoa. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta
Elisabetta Corsi ran onto the stage towards the emcee. A minute later, she was dragged away. Photo by Victoria Odissonova. Courtesy of Novaya Gazeta
Timati speaking to state TV at the premiere showing of his new clothing collection. Courtesy of Buro 24/7
General Andrei Kartopolov has never worked in political indoctrination. Photo by Alexander Nikolayev. Courtesy of Interpress/TASS and Vedomosti
Businessman Valery Pshenichny did not kill himself in his cell in a Petersburg remand prison, as the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service has claimed. 
“So that everything is just so” (Chtoby vsyo bylo v azhure). Exhibits at a trade show, organized by the Russian National Guard, dealing with law enforcement equipment. Krasnomarmeysk, Moscow Region, May 25, 2017. Photo courtesy of Anton Lukanin/TASS
Russian National Guard Units in Russia (Districts and Cities Where Units Are Deployed. Source: 
Russian National Guardsmen during combat training. Moscow Region, February 2017. Photo courtesy of Dmitry Korotayev/Kommersant
The Russian Reader 