In uniform

The fight against terrorism:
Medvedev is going on the road of Putin

April 8, 2010 Andrey Soldatov, Irina Borogan

In the week, who passed after the explosions in the metropolitan subway, President Dmitry Medvedev actively invaded the Putin sphere, which is considered the fight against terrorism, and proposed several decisions. They, apparently, must demonstrate that his approach to the problem differs from the former, which, given what had happened, did not clearly justify himself. To date, these are three initiatives - the president’s decree on transport security, the appointment of a new security forces in the North Caucasus and the introduction of a scale of terrorist threats.

The decree “On the creation of a comprehensive system for ensuring the safety of the population in transport” requires the creation of a system of preventing emergency situations and terrorist attacks, primarily in the subway. Judging by the text, we are talking about equipping public transport with special technical equipment from “acts of illegal intervention”, as well as systems for collecting information about emergency and threat of terrorist attacks. That is, in the subway, additional systems for tracking passengers will be installed, as well as all kinds of devices that determine the presence of poisonous, toxic other dangerous substances in the air.

According to the document, the most vulnerable objects should be equipped with special equipment until the end of March next year, and until 2014 the entire security system should be completed.

Since this is the only open document adopted after the explosions in the subway, we can conclude that the state intends to invest in preventing terrorist attacks at the last stage - when a terrorist with a bomb or cylinder with poisonous gas is already moving towards the target and enters the field of view of certain control systems.

Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that the camera or sensor will not help to stop the terrorist in the crowd of subway or at the station, at least there have been no such examples over the past ten years. In addition, as Russian experience showed, the framework can be an obstacle to passing into a certain zone, but is not able to prevent the terrorist from exploding among people. At the wings festival in Tushino, Shahida could not go to the stadium and exploded in line at the framework.

Of course, video shooting can help quickly establish the personality of a suicidist, and probably it will be useful when searching for accomplices of a terrorist, although the latter, as a rule, are disguised correctly, hiding behind caps and changing the shape of the face with glasses. But all this has nothing to do with the prevention of the terrorist attack itself and, at best, facilitates the investigation of the already incident tragedy.

The most developed video surveillance system in London (according to official figures, in the UK for every 12 people there is one camera) could not prevent terrorist attacks in subway and buses in 2005, although, as it turned out, terrorists along the way to the places of the explosion and at the stage of preparing the terrorist attack entered the chambers of the cameras.

British policemen already admit that all this technique is almost useless even against ordinary crimes, not to mention terrorist attacks. Thus, the head of the CCTV CCTV Office Mick Neville said at a press conference in 2008 that less than one of 30 crimes is revealed using CCTV, with the help, and not just thanks to it.

In addition, for obvious reasons, the metro and crowded public transport in large cities cannot be equipped with the same safety tools that are used at airports (frames, x -rays, all kinds of detectors). What the head of the metro Dmitry Gaev spoke many times about in the last days.

The second initiative voiced after Moscow attacks was the scale of terrorist threats, which the National Anti -Terrorism Committee intends to introduce - according to the type of one in the United States after 9/11 attacks.

Obviously, first of all, this scale is intended for the population, since the special services already have their own internal scheme of actions when any terrorist threats appear. How effective the threat scale is to increase vigilance and ultimately to prevent terrorist attacks, the question is open. For example, before the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, the degree of threat was reduced. In addition, experience showed that increasing the level of threat only increases the nervousness of the population. Ordinary people who are not trained to recognize dangerous behavioral features tend to see them for everyone who looks or behaves "wrong." This, of course, leads to an increase in suspicion and xenophobia. At the same time, special services are littered with a huge amount of information garbage, to which they are required to respond.

The third Medvedev step was the personnel decision in the North Caucasus. Having visited Dagestan, the president appointed a curator of the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the North Caucasus of the deputy head of the internal troops Evgeny Lazinin, who in 2005-2006. He headed the combined group (OGV) of the federal forces.

All three decisions proposed by Medvedev in the wake of terrorist attacks unites one quality. This is a direct continuation of the Putin strategy formulated in the beginning and mid-2000s.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs has been investing funds in the control systems, including video surveillance, at least since 2005. The scale of terrorist threats is the beloved brainchild of Nikolai Patrushev while still by its director of the FSB, and they have been trying to introduce it since 2004. However, if the effect of these two initiatives is simply doubtful, then the appointment of a general of internal troops is in a separate row.

The Kremlin began to systematically put forward internal troops (BB) to the main role in the North Caucasus back in the mid-2000s. Then, in the ranking of terrorist threats, the attacks of large detachments of militants in the cities took the upper line, as happened in 2004, when the Basayev detachment for almost a day took control of the tanker. Therefore, the main task was to have on hand the heavily armed detachments of special forces to repel the attack and conduct military operations in the mountains or in the forest.

Having appointed Lasubin, Medvedev showed that he continues to consider the attacks of large forces of the militants by the most dangerous threat. Obviously, this approach has nothing to do with the prevention of terrorist attacks using suicide bombers, which requires primarily intelligence work - not the strongest place of explosives.

In addition, the choice of Medvedev demonstrates that the Kremlin is not even going to start the struggle for "hearts and minds" in the North Caucasus. Internal troops have a completely established reputation in the region. There are no such words that could convince the local population to cooperate with the slats. But this did not care about Putin and, as it turns out, is not at all interested in Medvedev.

Photo by RIA Novosti