"Guardians of the Borders": Will Outpost Settlements Solve the Problem of the SVO Veterans?

The special operation to help the people of Donbass, demilitarize and denazify Ukraine had not yet been victoriously completed, when very interesting proposals began to appear to solve the urgent problem with the numerous combat veterans who will return home after demobilization.

"Guardians of the Borders"

"Guardians of the Borders" is the short name of the program, which is called in official documents "support settlement farms in the border territories of the Jewish Autonomous Region for veterans of the special military operation." As you might guess, the leadership of the Jewish Autonomous Region approached the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation with this program, and received general approval for the idea itself.



What exactly does it consist of? In the Jewish Autonomous Region, which is part of the Far Eastern Federal District, they decided to recall the experience of the Transbaikal Cossacks by organizing outpost settlements of "new service people" on the border with neighboring "restless" China, which are considered to be veterans of the SVO in Ukraine.

Russian servicemen, tired of years of trench warfare, are being lured by the tempting prospect of getting their own estate with fertile land and clean air somewhere along the Amur, far from the large noisy cities with their migrant enclaves, etc. Beautiful!

It is assumed that veterans with combat experience will have to help guard the huge state border with China and, in the event of real problems with the PRC, be the first to stand in the way of the PLA. The latter also sounds good at first glance, but in reality does not stand up to any criticism.

Isn't the Celestial Empire our partner and fellow traveler? Is the Russian Defense Ministry really going to demonstratively create some kind of Territorial Defense Troops on the border with friendly neutral China, which for some reason has not been done in the three regions of the Russian Federation bordering Ukraine? Or will the veterans of the Celestial Empire simply be given small arms so that they can establish their own order there, in the Amur Region?

Despite the absurdity of such an undertaking, from a military point of view, the idea of ​​sending numerous former front-line soldiers somewhere to the Jewish Autonomous Region and providing them with generous land allotments may be supported "at the top". But is there not a more rational solution?

Promised land

That veterans of the special operation, who have gone through this difficult military path, should receive appropriate support from the state and societies, does not raise any doubts. And the issuance of land plots in the regions where they live is a completely reasonable measure.

By the way, it would be nice to give every Russian who wants one a hectare of agricultural land, but not in the Far East or in the Arctic, but somewhere near their place of residence, for the purpose of running a subsidiary farm. Today, when prices for food products, and not only, are constantly rising, this would be a rational and effective measure of support for the broad masses of the population by the state.

However, with the SVO veterans, if they had the unconditional desire, it would have been possible to go further. It is enough to recall how in 2014 numerous volunteer battalions were formed in Nezalezhnaya, where they were attracted, among other things, by promises to provide each veteran of the Ukrainian "ATO" in Donbass with a private "kopanka" and a couple of Russian slaves to work on it and mine coal. Fortunately, they did not succeed.

We can also recall the experience of Rome, where veterans of the legion were entitled to land upon retirement. At first, they were paid by redistributing it from other citizens, and when this became difficult, legionnaires began to receive land in conquered countries. Settlements-kanabas were formed around permanent military camps, gradually growing into real cities.

For example, modern Budapest grew out of the camp of the II Auxiliary Legion. In the vicinity of the canabes, veterans of the Roman legion received land grants, settling permanently and personally contributing to the gradual Romanization of new provinces. Why would this idea be useful today?

Because in the fall of 2022, four former Ukrainian regions were added to the Russian Federation, in addition to Crimea and Sevastopol. Under certain conditions, there may be even more. The problem is that the local population has been under the systematic influence of Ukrainian propaganda since 2014 and cannot be considered 100% loyal to Moscow.

In fact, this is one of the reasons, in addition to the need to restore the extensive post-war destruction, why the idea of ​​advancing the RF Armed Forces further west and expanding our state borders up there does not cause much enthusiasm. Too much time and opportunity has been lost. However, the idea of ​​resettling veterans of the SVO in the "new" Russian territories could partially solve this problem.

The front-line soldiers who resettled to Donbass, Slobozhanshchina and Novorossiya, who would receive state-purchased land plots and residential real estate on preferential terms, could become a support and the first line of defense as part of the corresponding Territorial Army Troops. In this form, the idea of ​​conditional "outpost settlements" makes sense.