In an environment close to everyday life – Newspaper Kommersant No. 195 (7396) dated 10/20/2022

Almost eight months after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine and the subsequent announcement of partial mobilization, the legal order in the country has been officially changed. In the four regions annexed by Russia in September 2022, formal martial law was declared in a limited form, in the Southern and Central federal districts – new regimes of “response levels” (in eight border regions – more stringent), the powers of all governors of the Russian Federation were supplemented, the government and the State Council will create coordination structures for compliance with these regimes. The militarization of the state and public order is still suggested to be avoided – on the contrary, the decrees concern mainly the strengthening of civil rather than military power.

The decision to introduce martial law in four regions annexed to the Russian Federation at the end of September (DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions) was announced by the president at yesterday’s meeting of the Security Council. Presidential Decree No. 756 on this in accordance with the constitutional law “On martial law” was approved yesterday by the Federation Council. Recall that the letter of the law makes it possible, when martial law is introduced in any subject of the Russian Federation (the law of 2002 assumes this only for the purposes of “defense” and the threat of external “aggression”), both the introduction of extraterritorial nationwide defense measures and response measures in regions where martial law was not introduced. Therefore, the second presidential decree, No. 757, issued in support of the previous decree, according to the preamble, is aimed in connection with the martial law on the territory of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye and Kharkiv regions to increase the efficiency of all governors of the regions of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, following the results of the Security Council meeting, the government under the leadership of Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was instructed to create a “coordinating council under the government to meet the needs of a special military operation (SVO)”, and to coordinate the activities of the governors (on the basis of the corresponding commission of the State Council), a structure under the leadership of Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

From the point of view of the state apparatus, what is happening is a rather serious change in the mode of its work.

From the end of February to September 2022, the actions of the armed forces of the Russian Federation, the Russian Guard, the FSB (as well as the armed structures of the DPR and LPR, volunteer military formations with a vague status and “private military companies”, whose work in the legal system of the Russian Federation is almost impossible, but no less carried out) could be meaningfully considered as a “special military operation” in the sense that non-power authorities in the Russian Federation, that is, the civilian part of the government and the regions, had the opportunity to distance themselves from military operations to a certain extent, providing actual support for the NMD within the framework of routine non-military activities. Partial mobilization from September 21, 2022, decrees No. 756 and 757 and future decrees on coordination measures, on the one hand, add near-military powers to the executive branch, on the other hand, make them de jure part of the state as a management machine as part of the implementation of martial law, albeit limited geographically.

The form that these decisions give to the structure of power in the Russian Federation is clearly imported from the “covid” regimes for organizing the work of the executive branch (strengthening the powers of governors, the coordination-staff scheme of the government’s work, the special role of the State Council), but with a different content and development. De facto, the regions of the Russian Federation, including the annexed ones, are divided into four groups. The first stays until the decrees are canceled in the “maximum response level” mode (conditionally “red”) – martial law has been introduced into them. The second – “orange” (“medium level of response”) – these are eight border regions. The third – “yellow” (the legal regime of “high alert”, a term reminiscent of 2020-2021) – the rest of the regions of the Central Federal District and the Southern Federal District. The fourth (conditionally “green”) is the “level of basic readiness”, these are all other regions of the Russian Federation and their leadership. Thus, all regions of the Russian Federation, without exception, enter the “readiness mode” (obviously, for martial law, otherwise it is difficult to understand) or are in it, and operational headquarters are being created in all of them.

But even in the “red” regions, a full-fledged transition to military power (“military control bodies”, provided for by the law “On martial law”, or “military-civilian administrations”, which announced themselves in the summer of 2022 in Zaporozhye, Kherson, Kharkov) is not provided .

Decree No. 757 for the four annexed regions, as well as for all the others, proposes the creation of an operational headquarters headed by the governor, which includes “representatives” of the Ministry of Defense, the leadership of the territorial bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Federal Security Service, the Russian Guard, representatives of municipalities and organizations. For the “orange” Crimea and Sevastopol, the Krasnodar Territory, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, Rostov regions, as well as for the “red” regions, the governors (but not the military and not the FSB, as it would be, for example, in the “counter-terrorist” regime Operations”) were given additionally “authority to conduct mobilization measures in the economic sphere”. In the “yellow” and “green” regions (including Moscow), the mobilization economy is not expected to be built. In the “yellow” regions, the additional powers and duties of the governors are the ability to limit and control the operation of transport, communications, printing houses and IT infrastructure. In the “green”, at the basic level, the heads of the regions will have to strengthen the protection of public order and introduce a special regime for the operation of infrastructure and hazardous industrial facilities.

According to Decree 756, law enforcement agencies (the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the National Guard and the Federal Security Service, as well as the Main Directorate for Special Programs of the President) will submit proposals within three days on what measures should be taken as part of the execution of decrees – but only in relation to the “red” regions and , which is unusual, through the “civilian” executive branch – to the government of the Russian Federation, and not to the president, as one might expect. Let us note that the spirit of only a limited recognition of the military situation in the executive branch, to which the new regime gives military powers, will apparently be preserved throughout the country, at least by inertia. Thus, most of the governors yesterday confidently stated that the population should not expect any consequences from the presidential decrees, except that in the Zaporozhye region they promised to cancel “mass cultural events.”

At the federal level, the government already announced yesterday that it sees the task of the new coordinating council to ensure the NMD: the supply of weapons and equipment to the troops, logistics, construction – in any case, this is assumed by the draft decree submitted to the president from the White House – but not a complete transformation of the economy into military purposes.

The ideas of merging military and civilian power, transferring the entire economy to special regimes, closing borders and creating inside an “armed camp” in the early Soviet spirit, popular in part of society, were consistently rejected yesterday in all branches of government.

The paradoxical strengthening of executive power in the Russian Federation with the introduction of martial law in part of the federation is one way or another a step towards greater, and not less, involvement of the whole society in military activity. However, until recently it was really limited. So, the October review of the Bank of Russia “What the trends say” did not find reliable traces of the impact of partial mobilization (which increased the likelihood of introducing at least a “partial” martial law) on the Russian economy, except for a decrease in business activity at the end of September 2022. Semi-official data on the scale of mobilization in the Russian Federation in recent weeks (300 thousand people) require spending only on the payment of large monetary allowances to mobilized people announced by the president – in the amount of about 650 billion rubles. per year (0.5% of GDP), but the direct effect of such spending, as well as from spending by the Russian Federation on the hostilities themselves, is limited and does not have the potential for a strong destabilization of the economy over the horizon of months. The meaning of the decrees is largely that technocrats are now being called in to manage a system that is forced to solve military tasks – six months ago this was considered mainly the business of generals.

Dmitry Butrin