Russian Defense Ministry radically changes its tactic of fight against Chechen rebels

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov discussed the issues of fighting terrorism with the commanders of the Military District of the North Caucasus region.
The Minister said that the military does not always react to arising threats accordingly.
 
”The recent events demonstrated that the law-enforcers, including the Defense Ministry, do not always react to the arising threats as they should. I issued some orders dealing with the problem: we are going to check the military units’ efficiency. They should be rather small, but mobile units being ready to be off for any location within 5 minutes after their commander’s order”, said Sergey Ivanov to reporters. According to the Defense Minister, two compact Alpine brigades will be formed in the North Caucasus Military District to fight in the mountainous area. The brigades will be equipped by light highly-precision weapons and helicopters, their personnel will undergo special Alpine training. 

The Defense Minister stated that by 2008 “55% of soldiers and sergeants in the North Caucasus Military District, will be serving on a contract basis” as “the state got funds to transfer the ground forces permanent alertness units, Marines and paratroopers on a contract basis.  89 billion roubles will be allocated for this in the 4 years to come”, said Sergey Ivanov.
He also said that in 2005 a base for the Black Sea Fleet would start being constructed in Krasnodar region bordering with Chechnya. “It was decided to continue developing North Caucasus Military District, in particular, to construct a small base for the Black Sea Fleet in Krasnodar region, said Sergey Ivanov to reporters in city Rostov-na-Donu. “Several hundreds of millions of roubles has already been allocated to construct this base. We need it much, and constructing the base will take several years”. The Minister also mentioned that new fighter helicopters , such as Mi-28, will be purchased for the North Caucasus Military District.

700 billion roubles for Defense Ministry

Russian military expenditures will be increased by 40%. In this way, in 2005 Russia will spend about 700 billion roubles on its military (about 24 billion dollars). We want to believe that the military officials will not steal a part of the money, but will allocate the funds to the military needs, such as purchasing weapons for Russian special services.

New weapons for special services were tested on the testing ground in Moscow region, such as noiseless guns, rifles and shooting knives. According to specialists, many of the new weapons are unique and have no analogies in the world.

9-millimeter gun “Gyurza” is very efficient in the professional’s hands. Even an inexperienced person hits the target located 100 meters away from this gun with no problem. Being with Veresk machine-gun, Gyurza gun is good for assault groups: because of the specially constructed bullets the weapons hit through any body armors within the distance of 100 meters.
These weapons are noiseless, and only special forces use this gun and machine-gun. They try to save bullets as one shot costs about $10.

A noiseless gun has no silencer. Its bullet is of special shape, powder gas inside its shell are slowed down, and no blast wave is formed”, says Chief Constructor of special small arms for the state company Aleksander Borisov. Foreigners are ready to pay tens of thousands of dollars for the experimental samples of the Russian weapons.  The new modification of a sniper rifle is especially popular in the Middle East. It disseminates the sound of shot, so it is extremely hard to find out the sniper’s location. More new secret small arms are being designed.

Department of Politics