[A-List] Russia: accumulating state power

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Putin puts KGB muscle back into security arm

Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Wednesday March 12, 2003
The Guardian

President Vladimir Putin justified his reputation as an authoritarian former
KGB officer yesterday by giving the Russian security service new powers
reminiscent of its Soviet predecessor.

The Kremlin transferred control of border patrols and government
communications to the federal security service, the FSB.

President Putin, who served in the KGB, became head of the FSB before being
appointed prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, and then succeeding him as
president.

Boris Nadezhdin, a liberal MP, said: "An initial analysis of this reform
would lead you to believe that the FSB has virtually taken on the form of
what used to be the KGB."

Mr Putin's evident belief in the need for a strong domestic security service
to keep Russia on the right track has led him to promote the powers and
interests of his former employer.

The resulting round of spy trials and crackdowns on critical newspapers has
caused his more extreme critics to speak of a "police state".

Yesterday's reforms reinforced the belief that he cares little about such
criticism.

"They are recreating the same old monster," said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a
Soviet-era dissident who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group, a human rights
organisation.

"It will definitely have a negative impact on civil society."

Mr Putin said on television that the changes had been made because of the
"inefficiency of government structures" in the "very important spheres" of
the fight against drugs and terrorism.

His spokesman said the border guard service had asked to become part of the
FSB for the same reasons.

The changes would save government cash, he added.

Mr Putin has packed his government with his former colleagues.

Sergei Kovalyov, an MP and rights activist who spent years in a labour camp
for criticising the communist regime, said: "[The reforms] are a natural
step for a person who came from this organisation and surrounded himself by
people with similar records."

Power was taken from the KGB in the early 1990s, after the fall of
communism, to make the once dreaded and untouchable institution more
suitable for Russia's new democratic society.

The reforms return these old internal powers to the FSB, although the the
foreign reconnaissance service remains responsible for the KGB's role in
foreign intelligence.

The reorganisation has involved abolishing two ministries, the federal
agency for government communications and information - the Kremlin's
eavesdropping arm - and the federal tax police service.

The defence ministry and the FSB take on the job of being the government's
ears and eyes. The notoriously cumbersome and corrupt ministry of the
interior takes control of the tax police's remit.

With the border guard, which polices Russia's enormous frontier, transferred
to the FSB, its head, General Konstantin Totsky, has been made Russia's
ambassador to Nato.

He said he was pleased with his new role.

Mr Putin has created a new agency, the state committee for drug control,
which will be headed by the current presidential envoy to the St Petersburg
region, Nikolai Cherkesov, another former intelligence officer .

The reorganisation has led to a cabinet reshuffle in which Mr Putin's allies
have risen in the government ranks.

Analysts said the reorganisation was a necessary shock to the bloated
security system, which had failed to stop the occupation of a Moscow theatre
by Chechen terrorists in October, and other terrorist acts.

They added that such draconian reforms might even go down well with the
electorate, keen to see order return to Russia even at the expense of its
new-found freedom.