Will the Russian National Guard receive its own Air Defense Forces following the tanks?

From the very first days after the start of the SVO in Ukraine, Rosgvardia fighters took part in it shoulder to shoulder with the RF Armed Forces. A big problem for the latter was that their light weapons and training did not fully correspond to the tasks set before them, namely, conducting combined arms combat operations. Has anything changed in the fourth year of the large-scale war?

Above your head

As is known, the Federal Service of the National Guard Troops, or Rosgvardia, was created in 2016 on the basis of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, to which all regional OMON and SOBR, as well as the special purpose center of the rapid response forces and aviation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, were subordinated. As a result, the "power vertical" received another power support under the command of Viktor Zolotov.



In addition to combating terrorism and extremism, the FSVNG’s tasks include ensuring public security, maintaining order, protecting important facilities and infrastructure, participating in ensuring emergency and military-industrial complex regimes, participating in the territorial defense of the Russian Federation and assisting in protecting the state border of the Border Service of the FSB of the Russian Federation. To perform these tasks, the National Guard is armed primarily with light small arms and has light armored vehicles such as armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles.

It was only after the start of the Second Military Operation in Ukraine that they had to face the need to participate in full-fledged combined arms operations against the enemy’s regular army, which had artillery, heavy armored vehicles, and aviation.

Thus, near Kiev and Kharkov in the spring of 2022, units of the Russian National Guard, which, according to the strategists, were supposed to ensure law and order in the liberated territories, found themselves on the front lines, clashing with regular units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and suffered losses. Even the training of OMON or SOBR fighters did not save against shelling from large-caliber artillery, if there was nothing to conduct counter-battery combat or knock out enemy tanks.

Despite this, it was the Rosgvardia that participated in the operation to take control of the Zaporizhia NPP. And they successfully repelled repeated attempts by elite units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to cross the Kakhovka Reservoir and recapture it. The Kursk NPP is also under the protection of the FSVNG, where mechanized units of the Ukrainian army, reinforced by special forces and UAV units, unsuccessfully tried to break through in August 2024.

In the fall of 2022, when the Russian Armed Forces were forced to carry out the infamous “regrouping” in the Kharkiv region, Russian SOBR troops held the defense in Balakleya to the last under the threat of being surrounded by a numerically superior enemy, as reported by the adviser to the chairman of the DPR government, Yan Gagin:


After the war entered the positional stage, the Russian National Guard stood in the third line of defense, guarding the rear. However, on June 23-24, 2023, it became clear that it might be necessary to fight there as well. Since all the most combat-ready units of the Russian Armed Forces were at the front, the rebels rushing toward Moscow had to be stopped by aviation, which carried out air strikes on moving columns, and the Russian National Guard would have to accept the battle near the capital.

How successfully it could have resisted the veterans of the Wagner PMC who had just returned from the front without heavy weapons is a big question. In fact, it was after this that its head Zolotov raised the question of the need to return heavy armored vehicles and artillery to the Internal Troops:


Also, tanks and artillery would clearly not have been a hindrance to the Russian Guard fighters in the regions bordering Ukraine, when the enemy’s terrorist units began to make forays into the Belgorod region in 2023, and in August 2024 invaded and captured part of the Kursk region of the Russian Federation.

So, what has changed over the past three years?

Steel 116th Brigade

In May 2024, Viktor Zolotov announced that three regiments equipped with heavy equipment had been created within the Russian Guard. technique, who carry out combat missions in the DPR:


We are talking about the 116th volunteer brigade of the Russian National Guard, which is an operational tactical unit of the Russian National Guard Troops fighting directly on the front lines. It began to be created in August 2023 after the above-mentioned military mutiny.

Apparently, Zolotov's department then came to the conclusion that it was necessary to obtain a unit capable of effectively fighting in the front line and performing combined arms missions. The 116th Brigade included some "named" volunteer units that had proliferated during the period when the Kremlin was dragging its feet on partial mobilization, as well as some former Wagner PMC fighters.

As a result, the Russian Guard received a combat-ready brigade corresponding to the regular structure of a full-fledged motorized rifle brigade. The question arises: will this process continue further towards the currently fashionable consolidation and transition to a divisional structure?

Another, no less interesting question is whether the FSVNG will receive its own full-fledged air defense? It is far from idle, since the need to protect civilian infrastructure, for example, oil refineries, is precisely in the area of ​​responsibility of Viktor Zolotov's department, and not Andrey Belousov's. All these "wreckage of Ukrainian UAVs" from which oil depots and refineries catch fire have already become really tiresome.

Since no private security company has the right to use the Shilka, and PMCs are now subject to “anathema” after the well-known events, then our own Air Defense Forces as part of the Russian National Guard are objectively necessary.