The border guards surrendered

The new director of the border service will integrate it into the FSB
The budget of the Federal Security Service will double
Boris Yeltsin yesterday appointed Colonel General Nikolai Bordyuzha as the new director of the Federal Border Service. However, the appointment of a new leader (a little over a month after the resignation of Andrei Nikolaev) will not save the border guards from being absorbed by the Federal Security Service. The fate of the FPS has been decided: its entry into the FSB is now only a matter of time.

Border guards are returning to the structure of the Federal Security Service, which they were part of until 1993. (By the way, in most countries of the world, border troops are not independent, but are part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or State Security.) According to Kommersant's information, last weekend Nikolai Bordyuzha met with FSB Director Nikolai Kovalev. They discussed the prospects for joint work and priority measures to merge the two departments. In other words, the border guards signed an act of their unconditional surrender.
This became completely clear yesterday, when Boris Yeltsin canceled his meeting with the new head of the Federal Border Guard Service. Theoretically, Bordyuzha could present to the president arguments against the abolition of an independent FPS and shake his confidence in the advisability of this step. However, Bordyuzha was received only by First Deputy Head of Administration Yuri Yarov.
The FSB staff will now increase by more than 200 thousand people, guarding not only the Russian border, but also a significant part of the external borders of the CIS: in particular, the Armenian, Georgian and Tajik sections. The FSB budget will more than double: 3.8 billion “border” rubles will be added to the 6.7 billion denominated rubles that are expected to be allocated to the security service in 1998.
However, it is still quite difficult to calculate the direct benefit of the FSB from the takeover of the border service. At the end of last year, for the first time in four years of independence, border guards announced that the funds allocated from the budget were insufficient. They estimated the service's needs at 8 billion denominated rubles. If this is really the case, then the FSB, even taking into account the reduction of the central apparatus of the FPS (currently it numbers 2,900 people and will be reduced by at least half), will face serious problems with the material support of border guards.
In addition, the FSB will receive completely different elite units from the border troops in Soviet times. If then the cream of the conscript contingent was sent to the border, now the General Staff responsible for conscription recruits border guards with those whom the army refuses. The FSB will also not get heavy weapons, which the border troops have been actively equipped with in recent years: at the end of last year it was decided that the FBS would disarm and turn into a semi-civilian service, the backbone of which would be Cossack formations. But if back then it was planned to do this by 2010, now the reform of the FPS will certainly go much faster.

NIKOLAY J-GULKO

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 11 dated January 27, 1998, p. 3

Authors:

Nikolay Gulko