All posts in category Security

Exit Pavel Grachev, Russian defense minister 1992-96

His master’s voice

So Pavel Grachev died today, age 64. It may be frowned on to speak ill of the dead, but I would be hard pressed to say anything positive about Grachev — “Pasha Mercedes” — the over-promoted and under-achieving defense minister of Russia 1992-96 and the man who, I would suggest, deserves perhaps the greatest share of the blame for the military’s slide into corruption, indiscipline, ineffectiveness and conceptual bankruptcy. This is, after all, a legacy with which Russia is still struggling. That’s not to say that without Grachev there would not still be problems (there would, especially as a result of the Soviet legacy), but his time in office undoubtedly worsened them. He was a fine, courageous tactical paratroop commander by most accounts, deservedly made a Hero of the Soviet Union for his exploits in Afghanistan. But his elevation to minister when Yeltsin was looking for a pliable yes-man to keep the military in check was a terrible move, for everyone concerned.

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by Mark Galeotti on September 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Chechnya, Military - Russia, North Caucasus, Russian Politics, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 23, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/exit-pavel-grachev-russian-defense-minister-1992-96/

Russia: land of bizarre martyrs and unusual saints

Saint Gudkov: voting or blessing?

Russian Orthodoxy (not unlike the other saint-heavy brands of Christianity) has its share of unusual saints. St Ioann, who had himself buried in the ground for 30 years. St Prokopii of Ustyug, the ranting holy fool. St Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, or Tsar Nicholas II, who… well, who was a disastrously inept tsar.

However, it seems that modern Russia is eager to create its own secular equivalents. So, we have the Pussy Riot punk-rock band-happening, turned from marginal purveyors of discordant shock-rock into a trinity of philosopher-poets courtesy of a heavy-handed and neo-Inquisitorial trial and two-year sentence that even had Medvedev suggesting probation would be more appropriate.

Latest to the pantheon is Gennady Gudkov, the 11-year KGB veteran and since then successful dealer in non-state protection, stripped of his mandate to the Duma for — maybe — doing something that numerous of his colleagues do with impunity. In the process, he has been transmogrified into a self-sacrificing martyr, a saint whose years as a loyal member of the Just Russia pseudo-opposition (which for most of its life existed simply to grant legitimacy to the United Russia one-party state) has become a contemplative forty days in the wilderness — the Temptation of Gudkov — from which he emerged cleansed and focused.

I am, of course, being facetious. I have considerable respect for a man like him who, knowing he had much to lose (and also how vindictive the regime is to those it feels have broken from the pack), was still willing to make his voice heard. But considering how Gudkov can now become a symbol for a fraction of the elite who hitherto had been largely silent — the siloviki who are not necessarily at home with the hipsters and liberals but who dislike the current direction of policy from a practical, pragramatic and even nationalist perspective — his persecution and virtual beatification may prove yet another blunder. It may intimidate some people today and tomorrow, but it does nothing to reconcile them to the regime. If anything, it simply opens the cracks in the elite that little bit wider (something, I should add, I discuss in my Siloviks & Scoundrels column in the Moscow News here).

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by Mark Galeotti on September 14, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Russian Politics, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 14, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/russia-land-of-bizarre-martyrs-and-unusual-saints/

In EUROPP on the political (ab)use of the law in Russia

 

Just to note, Once again, the law in Russia is becoming a tool of political control, a commentary of mine on the use of the law and the investigatory apparatus in Russia as a tool to silence and suppress the opposition — including figures such as Gennady Gudkov — is on EUROPP, the LSE’s European Politics & Policy blog, here.

 

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by Mark Galeotti on September 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in FSB, Investigative Committee, Russian Politics, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 13, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/09/13/in-europp-on-the-political-abuse-of-the-law-in-russia/

Good Times for the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (SKRF)

The Investigations Committee (SKRF) under Alexander Bastrykin has emerged as the focus of the maximalist, hardline school of thought within the Russian elite as regards the new protest movement. It is by no means a line universally shared, but if we were wondering how well it is playing to those who finally make the decisions, it is worth looking at the provisions of a new draft law.

A solid analysis in Izvestiya outlines how the law, snappily titled “On amendments to some legislative acts of the Russian Federation in connection with improving the structure of preliminary investigation,” will:

  • Give the SK prime responsibility for investigating some 2 million crimes a year.
  • Grant the SK wider powers to investigate VIPs: judges, prosecutors, parliamentarians, even siloviki from the military, intelligence services, police, even the FSB.
  • Transfer investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) to the SK
  • See the SK expand from its present strength of 23,000 to some 60,000 investigators and staff. (As a corollary, it will have to acquire new premises, too.)
  • Increase the SK’s budget by 97.5 B rubles ($3 B).

The law has been passed from the Presidential Administration on to the government (showing the Kremlin’s support for it) and is meant to be fully in force by 1 January 2013. The MVD and FSKN will not lose all their investigators, but to rub in the current change in their fortunes, the SK will cherry-pick those it wants. The MVD will lose all its regional investigations units, while the FSKN is to lose some 5,200 staff by 2016, around 12% of its total complement.

So, the SK will acquire a particular role in deciding when criminal cases will be opened on serious charges, especially members of the opposition… and members of the elite. Obviously potential doesn’t always equal intent, but it does mean that the SK is becoming what Bastrykin appears to want to make it, the universal Kremlin enforcement, Putin’s Swiss army knife.

That said, Bastrykin ought not to be popping champagne corks quite yet. Progress in transferring investigators to the SK is moving more slowly than anticipated. In part this probably reflects a rear-guard action by the MVD and FSKN, as they hope this initiative can be foiled, delayed, diluted or reversed somewhere down the line. It is also because recent pay hikes for MVD staff mean that where once they were the badly-paid poor cousins (meaning that most people jumped at opportunities to move into more elitny and better-paid agencies like the FSB and SK), now they fear that they will actually suffer a pay cut.

Nonetheless, the SK is definitely on the rise. Combined with the recent elevation of hardline Moscow police ‘anti-extremism’ chief Timur Valiulin, then insofar as one can read anything from developments amongst the siloviki, the Kremlin seems to be preparing for a crackdown. The 15 September protests will be an interesting test case.

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by Mark Galeotti on September 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in FSB, Investigative Committee, Prosecutor General, Russian Politics, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 9, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/09/09/good-times-for-the-investigative-committee-of-the-russian-federation-skrf/

New head of the MVD’s anti-‘extremism’ “special branch” – GUPE

Col. Timur Valiulin

No sooner do I write on the panoply of political police agencies in Russia, including the so-called ‘E Centers’ of GUPE, the Interior Ministry’s Glavnoe upravlenie po protivodeistviyu ekstremizmy, Main Directorate for Combating Extremism, that GUPE gets a new boss. Today a presidential decree appointed Colonel Timur Samirovich Valiulin to the position, replacing Yuri Kokov, who has become head of the MVD’s All-Russian Institute for Advanced Training.

Previously, Valiulin had been head of the Moscow city police anti-extremism staff, so he was in charge of its E Centre and, presumably, would have played some role in such recent decisions as the prosecution of Pussy Riot. Although the E Centers have a pretty bad reputation in general, Moscow’s has seemed especially heavy-handed (Ilya Yashin has called it the “most radical” of all — and not as a compliment), so it is hard to be especially uplifted by this news.

Before then, he was head of Moscow police’s directorate for combating organized crime (UBOP) until that was abolished in line with Medvedev’s decree of September 2008. Previously  to that, he had been head of the economic crime team in Moscow’s central okrug (district) and deputy chief of the 16th Division of the Moscow GUVD’s Directorate for Combating Economic Crime (UBEP)

As another Moscow appointee, Valiulin is presumably if not a protege of new Interior Minister (and former Moscow police chief) Vladimir Kolokoltsev, at least someone with a certain connection to him. This certainly fits a general trend of the rise of ‘Muscovites’ within the MVD. Viktor Golovanov, for example, was Kolokoltsev’s deputy and interim successor at the Moscow GUVD, before becoming head of GUUR, the MVD’s Main Directorate for Criminal Investigations. Likewise, Deputy Interior Minister Arkady Gostev was formerly chief of staff of the Moscow GUVD.

Valiulin also appears to be on the more active, hardline side of the debate as to how to respond. Combine that with his background in economic crime investigations, and it helps explain why individuals like Alexei Navalny and Ksenia Sobchak increasingly seem to be being attacked through their bank accounts and business activities.

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by Mark Galeotti on September 5, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in MVD, Police, Police Reform, Russian Politics, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on September 5, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/new-head-of-the-mvds-anti-extremism-special-branch-gupe/

Is there a looming Russian crime threat to the Czech Republic?

I’m always cautious about high-blown warnings of impending gang wars, mafia “invasions” (Federico Varese has competently and comprehensively dismantled much of the mythology about that) and the like.

Nonetheless, I am getting alarmed by the possibility that the changing dynamics above all of drug trafficking through Russia — the rise of the “northern route” for Afghan heroin — is going to encourage Russian gangs into a renewed push into Central Europe in general, and the Czech Republic in particular. The 1990s saw the rise of Russian and other post-Soviet gangs there, a rise which was checked and reversed. While they were tamed, though, they did not disappear and they have the contacts, wealth and infrastructure to be able to re-establish a more powerful and dangerous role for themselves. As I expound in a piece in today’s Prague Post:

Ultimately, the unavoidable logic of the market means the Russians are coming. Afghan heroin is reshaping the Russian underworld, creating winners who want to establish trafficking routes through the Czech Republic, losers who are being pushed west into Central Europe and profits that need to be invested. The question is how Prague prepares itself to deter or deal with its future guests.

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by Mark Galeotti on August 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Organized Crime - Russia, Organized Crime - Transnational, Security

Posted by Mark Galeotti on August 30, 2012

https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/is-there-a-looming-russian-crime-threat-to-the-czech-republic/

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