Customs is given the go-ahead

The FSB director and the government are tasked with ending the second Chechen war

On Friday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev invited FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov to consider the issue of the current counter-terrorism operation (CTO) regime in Chechnya at the next meeting of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee, which Mr. Bortnikov heads ex officio. The next meeting of the NAC is scheduled for March 31. The committee must report its decision, if it is mature, to the Russian government - it will make the final decision whether terrorism has been defeated in Chechnya or not. The main point of the decision is whether to give Chechnya the right to independent customs clearance of goods.

Tomorrow was first named as a likely date for the official end of the second war in Chechnya last week , when President of the Republic Ramzan Kadyrov received a delegation of the State Duma Security Committee in Grozny. The President of Chechnya himself said that the decision to stop the operation would probably be made before the end of March. Judging by the reaction of some of the visitors, this turned out to be news for many of them. And some commentators in Moscow, including unnamed sources in the Kremlin administration, hastened to say that President Kadyrov was a little hasty.

But the leaders of the main Duma factions - United Russia member Boris Gryzlov and vice-speaker from A Just Russia Alexander Babakov - decided to support the “initiative from the floor.” Mr. Gryzlov recalled that carrying out countermeasures during a crisis is not cheap for the treasury. And Mr. Babakov, who had just visited Grozny among those invited by President Kadyrov, was greatly impressed by the pictures of peaceful life he saw.

Now fundamental support has also been received from Dmitry Medvedev. The Russian President did not directly propose to the FSB director to stop the operation in Chechnya, but from the tone of his remark it was clear what kind of solution he would like to see. “The situation in the Chechen Republic has been substantially normalized, life is returning to normal, modern facilities are being built, social problems are being solved,” said the head of state, instructing Mr. Bortnikov to bring this issue to the next meeting of the NAC. If the federal security forces share the optimism of the presidents of Russia and Chechnya, the government will only have to approve the result: Vladimir Putin is unlikely to spoil the picture for Ramzan Kadyrov, who in every speech emphasizes Putin’s services to Chechnya and still calls the prime minister a national leader.

Actually, the transfer of the “peace initiative” to the NAC, and then to the government, gives Vladimir Putin a chance to put an end to the end of the second Chechen war. Its beginning in the fall of 1999 meant a lot for the presidential election campaign of Prime Minister Putin, who was then not very well known to the country. But the decree on the start of the counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya on September 23, 1999 was signed, of course, by President Boris Yeltsin, who still had a little more than three months left before his resignation. Mr. Putin, who was two presidential terms short of completing the operation that brought him victory in the presidential election, can now finally cement his role as a peacemaker. The central avenue of the restored Grozny bears the name of Vladimir Putin, although the lion's share of the 114-month counter-terrorism operation occurred during his two presidential terms.

The main argument of supporters of the abolition of the counter-terrorist operation regime in Chechnya is the actual restoration of peaceful life. Despite the fact that the second war in Chechnya, unlike the first (1994-1996), has not yet received an official end date, it is clear that the current situation is not even close to comparable, for example, with the “total war” of 2000. The head of the LDPR faction in the Duma, Igor Lebedev, proposes to measure stabilization by the ability of ordinary citizens to fly to Grozny as to Moscow or St. Petersburg. But in fact there is such an opportunity: a train station, an airport and highways are at the service of those wishing to visit Chechnya. You can come there, you can stay there and there is even something to see. Although, of course, it is still a long way from restoring the boarding houses and tourist routes that existed during the USSR.

Reports of local clashes between law enforcement officers and militants come from Chechnya quite often, but the general background in this regard is generally no worse, and sometimes better, than in neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan. In each of these three republics, security forces sometimes have to blockade entire areas in order to localize the “forest brothers.” But if in Ingushetia and Dagestan it is enough to introduce a CTO regime on a specific territory, then why does Chechnya fall under it entirely? Yesterday, however, there was another battle in the Kurchaloevsky district of Chechnya, two militants were killed. But such messages come from Ingushetia and Dagestan at least weekly, and it has not yet occurred to anyone in Moscow to extend the CTO regime to these republics in the “Chechen format”.

However, Dmitry Medvedev directly stated to FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov that “individual elements of the CTO regime,” if necessary, could be introduced in Chechnya and in other “our southern republics” where the threat of terrorist acts remains. The head of state reminded, just in case, that the FSB and other law enforcement agencies will have to “continue monitoring the situation,” although it is clear that since the “southern republics” are part of Russia, “continuing control” is the direct responsibility of law enforcement agencies.

In terms of force presence, the federals can hardly lose any part of their current influence on the situation in Chechnya if the CTO regime is actually removed. Parts of the permanent deployment (a brigade of internal troops, a division of the Ministry of Defense and a border detachment) will remain in their places. Military intelligence groups and other special units that occasionally “work against militants” in the mountains will be able to work as before - if necessary, a special regime can be introduced locally. The FSB, the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs will, as now, maintain a certain conditional balance of loyalty to their federal superiors and to the president of Chechnya. The latter has long played a significantly larger role in many issues than departmental leaders in Moscow. But this also happens in the presence of the CTO regime, so its abolition is unlikely to significantly change the current situation.

The security forces of Chechnya already dominate the process of maintaining law and order in the region. The main interest of the republic, apparently, is not in shifting the balance of power, but in the abolition of customs restrictions that the CTO regime imposes on Chechnya. The head of the Chechen customs post of Mineralovodsk customs (Stavropol Territory) Konstantin Kuchkin reported the other day that the Chechen customs service is fully staffed and ready to begin work as soon as restrictions are lifted. In Grozny, according to Mr. Kuchkin, the building of the republican customs department is almost ready, into which officials will be able to move in by the end of June.

The emergence of a full-fledged customs office will mean the long-awaited transformation of the Grozny airport into an international one, which will lead not only to the emergence of new passenger destinations, but also to the emergence of export-import cargo transportation. It is the customs segment of the responsibility and interests of the Russian security forces, and not at all the general background of the fight against militants and peaceful Chechen achievements, that will apparently become key to resolving the issue of lifting the CTO regime.

Ivan SUKHOV