Viktor Zolotov announced the receipt of heavy weapons by the Russian Guard

Providing the National Guard with tanks and artillery will make it possible to carry out the tasks assigned to the department more efficiently. This is how the official representative of the Russian Guard, Valery Gribakin, commented to Vedomosti on the earlier statement of the director of the Russian Guard, General of the Army Viktor Zolotov, about his intention to receive the appropriate heavy equipment. “Important service and combat tasks solved by the Russian Guard during a special military operation, new methods of hostile activity require an adequate response and new solutions,” Gribakin emphasized.

Zolotov spoke about plans to equip the units immediately after the speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin in front of military personnel on the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin (quote from RIA Novosti). The head of the National Guard added that the relevant issue was discussed with the president. The timing of the delivery of tanks and other heavy weapons for service, he said, will depend on funding.

According to Zolotov, the Wagner PMC was rapidly advancing across the country on June 23-24, because the main forces of the National Guard were concentrated near the capital. “If you scatter the grouping, they would just go through butter like a knife. The fist was concentrated to repulse, ”says the director of the service (quoted by TASS). He believes that the PMC could reach the capital, but could not take it. During the operation, Zolotov, he claims, was in touch with Putin.

The Russian Guard also includes the Akhmat Special Rapid Response Unit (SOBR), stationed in Chechnya and participating in the NWO. According to the head of the region Ramzan Kadyrov and other officials, “Akhmat” advanced in the direction of Rostov-on-Don and other points during the Prigozhin rebellion on June 23-24. On June 27, the commander of Akhmat, Apty Alaudinov, said on the air of Rossiya 1 that on June 24 the reconnaissance units of the unit did not reach the forces of the Wagner PMC in the Rostov region “500-700 meters”, but the leadership of the Ministry of Defense asked them not to join the battle.

The decision to return heavy equipment to the Russian Guard is absolutely logical and correct, Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, wrote in his Telegram (he was an adviser to the head of the Russian Guard in 2016-2018 – Vedomosti). “The decision is not situational and was made by the president on the initiative of the director of the Russian Guard, Viktor Zolotov, even before the events of June 23-24,” Khinshtein assured. He added that the issue of transferring military equipment to the department from the PMC “Wagner” “is not discussed.”

“All equipment is planned to be purchased as part of the state defense order. Applications were formed by the National Guard and sent to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Finance and other departments in the spring. The decision to equip heavy military equipment was made by the president at the beginning of the year and is not related to recent events. It’s just that for the time being it was not reported about him,” the deputy wrote. Khinshtein stressed that “what happened at the end of the week clearly confirmed the correctness of the decision and, I hope, will accelerate its implementation.” “For a belligerent department, which is the Russian Guard today, the availability of heavy equipment is the most important issue,” he said.

In 2016, after the former units and formations of the Internal Troops (VV) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were included in the Russian Guard, the then deputy head of the service, Sergey Erygin, said that there were no plans to receive heavy equipment. He added that artillery remained in service with service units in the North Caucasus, and “we do not plan to return to tanks.” “There is no internal situation that would predetermine the equipping of such samples,” Erygin said then. The last time tank units were used by the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya was in 2000-2005, after which they were transferred to the 58th Army of the Armed Forces.

In 2017, the National Guard also abandoned heavy engineering equipment – IMR-2 vehicles, BAT-2M track-laying machines and BTM-3 high-speed trench vehicles, as unsuitable for maintaining public order. Russian Guard since 2016–2017 retained only light armored vehicles from the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs – BTR-82, BTR-70, BRDM-2A, BMP-2, BTR-80 and Tiger armored vehicles. Units, including special forces, are equipped with small arms. She inherited the service from the VV and her own transport aviation – a fleet of Il-76, An-12, An-26 and An-72 aircraft, Mi-26 and Mi-8 helicopters, the latter being capable of performing fire support functions.

According to military expert Yuri Knutov, Zolotov’s statement about his intention to arm the National Guard with heavy equipment is logical, given that the service is involved in hostilities within the NMD. The expert believes that if before the NMD it was redundant to have MLRS, artillery and tanks, then the rebellion and raids of Ukrainian DRGs in the Belgorod region indicate the need for such weapons in mobile units, while the Taman and Kantemirovskaya divisions that previously formed the basis of the security of the constitutional order “are scattered “participation in the SVO, and the former division of Dzerzhinsky, now part of the Russian Guard, has only armored personnel carriers. Most likely, Knutov believes, a combined arms structure will be restored in the National Guard.

Military expert, editor of the Military Russia portal Dmitry Kornev doubts that reinforced units should be created somewhere other than the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, including this, according to him, also applies to Akhmat. He admits that the structure of the National Guard may well organically “absorb”, integrate into its structure and contain heavy weapons and units equipped with them. The appearance of tanks and other similar equipment, of course, will strengthen the self-sufficiency of the National Guard and, if it had them, it would feel “much more confident” in the events of June 23-24, and after the recent events, “there has come a good moment” for this. But first of all, strengthening the service with heavy weapons is an expression of confidence in the service on the part of the country’s top military-political leadership, Kornev concludes.