Wall Street Journal
THOMAS GROVE
The Kremlin is creating a new internal security force that answers directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, ahead of parliamentary elections.
The Russian government says the new force, called the Russian Guard, will be headed by Viktor Zolotov, who served as Mr. Putin’s personal bodyguard for 13 years. Mr. Putin directed the creation of the force this month through an executive order now under review by the lower house of parliament.
Mr. Putin said the security force is intended to tighten control over the arms trade in the country and streamline counterterrorism efforts. “We believe we can…reduce the cost of having various services,” he said in a televised question-and-answer session.
With parliamentary elections set for September, Russian security experts said the new force will be capable of putting down the kind of mass protests that arose following allegations of voting violations in the last such polls in 2011.“This is really about upcoming elections and the possibility of mass unrest,” said Boris Volodarsky, a former Russian military intelligence officer.
Russia has a mix of overlapping police, intelligence and paramilitary agencies that are responsible for internal security. Russia’s Interior Ministry has motorized infantry units, elite counterterror teams and riot police.
Officials say reorganization of the force is a way of cutting costs at a moment when Russia is facing the most sustained economic downturn since its 1998 default.
The order establishing the force says the Russian Guard would “preserve public order, guarantee public safety and the rules of a state of emergency.” The Russian Guard would have a loyalist at the helm in Mr. Zolotov. The former bodyguard, known for his black suits and dark sunglasses, was first assigned to protect Mr. Putin when the current president was a young bureaucrat working in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office.
In the early 1990s, Mr. Zolotov protected a number of leaders, and can be seen behind former President Boris Yeltsin in photographs of the leader as he gave his historic speech atop a tank against a 1991 coup attempt by communist hard-liners.
Since the start of Mr. Putin’s presidency, Mr. Zolotov has expanded the security force within the Kremlin walls. Under his leadership, the directorate of the Federal Guard Service tasked with protecting the president has swelled to 400 people and is equipped with modern arms and equipment, Mr. Volodarsky said. “He would not hesitate to do anything for Putin,” Mr. Volodarsky said. Attempts to reach Mr. Zolotov for comment were unsuccessful. Sweeping changes in the country’s security apparatus also reflect official worries about the potential for a Ukraine-style revolution in Russia. The draft law on the Russian Guard expands their powers well beyond what police can now do on the streets of Moscow or St. Petersburg. They can shoot without warning, and can employ nonlethal stun guns, handcuffs and tear gas without the current police procedures, the draft law states.
“During the course of the passage of the law, lawmakers may remove even more limits on their power,” said Kirill Titayev, a specialist on law-enforcement agencies at the St. Petersburg-based Institute for the Rule of Law. Russia’s capital would have a standing force of 20,000 Russian guards. More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Moscow following allegations of vote fraud in the 2011 parliamentary elections. Few people expect such protests to erupt following September’s elections, given a groundswell of nationalism after the annexation of Crimea and Russia’s military intervention in Syria, seen by most in Russia as successes. The creation of the Russian Guard may also deter demonstrators from gathering in the first place. “It’s more just a turning of the screws on the opposition and civil society and the militarization of the country,” said Yury Skuratov, Russia’s former prosecutor general under Mr. Yeltsin.
The creation of such a large force that would answer only to Mr. Putin would also have another implication: Decreasing the likelihood for palace intrigue and discouraging any potential revolt within the political or security elite. Mr. Putin is in his third term, and has no clear successor.
“I don’t think any political struggle is going to involve tanks in Red Square, but the very fact that there is a new additional force in the mix makes it that much harder to arrange any kind of conspiracy that can’t be hurriedly arrested by loyalists,” said New York University Professor Mark Galeotti, a specialist in Russian security.
The creation of the Russian Guards may also have an impact on Russia’s troubled region of Chechnya, where Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the republic, commands the loyalty of thousands of armed young men. Nominally part of the Interior Ministry troops, those troops in practice answer directly to Mr. Kadyrov, who uses them to enforce an uneasy peace in the region.
While Mr. Kadyrov, a former separatist, now professes allegiance to the Kremlin, Russian commentators see the appointment of Mr. Zolotov—who is believed to have a good personal relationship with Mr. Kadyrov—as an effort to gently rein in the Chechen ruler.
Mr. Kadyrov has threatened Russian political opposition figures and has been accused of involvement in the assassination of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, a charge Mr. Kadyrov denies.
The creation of the guard force, Mr. Galeotti said, “represents an attempt to try and paper over the cracks that have so visibly opened up between Mr. Kadyrov and Moscow since Nemtsov.”
