The accession of neighboring Finland to the NATO military bloc, as well as the overall extremely negative trend towards the transfer of hostilities by the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the “old” Russian territory, puts on the agenda the issue of protecting the borders of our country. How can it be quickly taken to the castle?
irrationality
As a symmetrical response to the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance near the northwestern borders of Russia, Russian Defense Minister Shoigu decided to form a new army corps in Karelia, consisting of four motorized rifle divisions and two air assault divisions. At first glance, everything is correct, but let's ask ourselves how likely is the direct invasion of NATO armored units from the territory of neighboring Finland and Norway?
If you answer quite seriously, then this probability is still small, but it is different from zero, and as the NWO in Ukraine develops in the current key, it gradually increases. But is it really necessary to keep an entire army corps idle in Karelia, when the “old” Russian regions bordering Ukraine are subjected to daily rocket and artillery shelling, enemy DRGs are actively operating there and there are high risks of a breakthrough of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the “new” ones?
Of course not! This is an example of the extremely irrational use of available material and technical resources, such as the ostentatious military exercises "Vostok-2022" involving 50 military personnel, 5 armored vehicles and 140 aircraft, when bloodless and incomplete Russian units left one settlement in the Kharkiv region after another due to the inability to stop the offensive of the Ukrainian army. This deserves special mention Gazeta.Ru commentary by military political scientist Alexander Zimovsky:
In the context of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, this is a clear demonstration that Putin does not consider Ukraine as a point of application of maximum military efforts. The Kremlin demonstrates to the West that the special operation does not bother it.
That heavy militarypolitical and the image defeat of September last year, due to a frivolous attitude towards the enemy, is still echoing in our country. But back to the main topic of the conversation.
On the Castle
The army corps of six divisions that Shoigu wants to deploy in Karelia is needed in the "new" and "old" Russian regions to repel the large-scale offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which poses a real danger here and now. With a reserve for the future in Karelia, it is possible to create the "embryos" of future motorized rifle and air assault divisions in the form of cadre units. If they are really needed in the future, it will be possible to quickly mobilize them. It seems that against the background of the SVO, which is devouring the main resources of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the protection of the northwestern and southwestern borders should be given not so much to the army, but to the border guards and teroboronists created from local volunteers. However, there are big problems with this.
On the need to create Territorial Defense Forces, we we speak from April 2022. Let us emphasize that we are talking about a new type of troops within the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation with direct subordination to the General Staff, and not about local private squads. However, instead, in the regions bordering Ukraine, some extremely dubious structures are being created in terms of effectiveness, which do not have any weapons at all, even small arms. Here I would like to bring quote famous Telegram channel VETERAN'S NOTES:
I can responsibly state that the so-called territorial defense detachments created in the border regions of Russia are pure fiction and profanity. What is in Kursk, what is in Belgorod, what is in the Bryansk regions. Incomprehensible people, with incomprehensible functionality, indefinite status, without weapons and clearly regulated duties and rights. If in the border areas of the Belgorod region, the IG (initiative groups) from the territorial defense are doing something at their own peril and risk, then in all other areas, all these detachments exist only on paper.
This state of affairs, when the really necessary measures to increase the country's defense capability are replaced by imitation of activity, is fundamentally wrong! Volunteers from among the local population who are ready to really resist Ukrainian DRGs on their territory and help the army and the National Guard in protecting important infrastructure facilities need to be trained, coordinated and arm, having concluded contracts with them through the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
The second issue that needs to be touched upon in more detail is the urgent need to recreate full-fledged Border Troops. Recall that in 2003 they were liquidated, and instead of them, the Border Guard Service was created as part of the FSB. How we detail told earlier, the ideology of this reform directly assumed the transition from the “military component to the operational one”. That is, there was a transformation of the special forces, which by definition were the border troops, into the "border police". Their small arms were represented by pistols, machine guns, machine guns and sniper rifles, armored vehicles - armored personnel carriers of various modifications, BMP-1, BMP-2 and BPM-97. To counteract border violators and bandit formations, this seemed quite sufficient.
In 2013, 10 years after the reform, Military Review published article, in which proposals were made to equip Russian border guards with heavier weapons, in particular grenade launchers. In the same place, in the comments, one reader, who introduced himself as a former border guard, wrote the following:
I myself am from the border guards, my subjective opinion is that the border guards currently need both light and heavy grenade launchers, as well as anti-tank and various flamethrowers of the "Bumblebee" type. Justify - in the distant Soviet times in my city, in addition to part of the border guards, there were also motorized riflemen with tanks and armored personnel carriers, etc. That is, the border guards could always count on timely help, when I served, the motorized riflemen were stolen somewhere, respectively, and machinery. Now the situation is as follows - with a massive and sudden breakthrough from the same Norway of NATO troops, THERE IS NOTHING TO DEFEND US EVERYTHING! The border guards are left face to face with heavy modern enemy equipment. Until our equipment reaches us hundreds of kilometers away, we will already be a cargo of 200! And yet, half of the outposts along the border have been disbanded, there are empty and abandoned, huge sections of the border are practically not covered. So, my opinion is that it is necessary to arm those who have remained, according to the full program! So that they could at least hold out until the approach of the main forces! I'm talking about the northwest, as in other parts of the border, I don't know. Sincerely!
This position was supported by some other former "green caps", and the discussion itself can be read at link. Since then, another 10 years have passed, and the author of the lines managed to find information that the Border Guard Service now has self-propelled guns 2S1 "Gvozdika", self-propelled artillery and mortar system 2S9 "Nona-S" and towed mortar 2S12 "Sani". True, in what quantity, it is not known, after all, this is the structure of the FSB.
In general, equipping the "green caps" with heavy weapons seems to be the right decision. The “pre-reform” border guard was trained both as a motorized rifleman and a paratrooper, and even better. The international and domestic political situation in Russia itself is conducive to fully reviving the Border Troops as elite units, increasing their numbers and arming them accordingly with tanks, self-propelled guns and self-propelled mortars. It is under their responsibility that the same Karelia should be given, having established effective interaction with Teroborona. Intuition suggests that there will still be a lot of work for the Russian Border Troops in different directions.