Head Of Russian Federal Frontier Service Is On A Visit To Tajikistan

Director of the Russian Federal Frontier Service (FSB) Colonel General Konstantin Totsky is studying the situation at the Tajik-Afghan border. As the press service of the Russian frontier group in Tajikistan reported, on Wednesday Konstantin Totsky flew by helicopter to the Tajik-Afghan border. The head of the FSB also intends to visit the sector of the Moskovsky frontier detachment, to meet its command and the personnel and to hand over to them the challenge banner - The Best Frontier Detachment of the Russian Federal Frontier Service. In June 2002, the Moskovsky frontier detachment of the Russian FSB in Tajikistan will mark its 70th anniversary. In 2001, the Moskovsky frontier detachment detained 35 transgressors of the state border and prevented 53 attempts to violate the frontier. In forty armed clashes with border transgressors forty armed drug couriers were killed. There were no losses among the Russian frontier-guards, only three were wounded. The Russian frontier-guards discovered four hundred caches with weapons and drug-containing substances; they confiscated twenty pieces of small arms, over 900 pieces of ammunition, including forty missiles, and seven foreign-made radio stations. The amount of detained drugs is continuing to grow. Last year, Russian frontier-guards at the section of the Moskovsky frontier detachment confiscated 4,164 kilogrammes of illegal drugs, including 1,669 kilogrammes of heroin. This figure is nearly two times higher than in 2000, pointed out the press service of the Russian frontier-guards.