Having said this, all is not well with the Russian force structures after more than two decades of transformation and restructuring. Concerns over their ongoing inefficiency, the militarization of the Russian state and society as a result of such a large number of militarized services, as well as over the potentially excessive influence and political role of these institutions, are certainly justified. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the Russian Federation with millions of citizens that had been employed in the country’s three vast force structures, the MoD, the MVD and the KGB. An immediate and drastic reduction of this workforce would have exacerbated the problem of unemployment in a country that was already struggling to accommodate hundreds of thousands of soldiers withdrawn from other former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact countries. However, the maintenance of hundreds of thousands of uniformed personnel in various structures until this very day shows that their prioritization was not only due to socio-economic considerations. The Russian force structures have undergone several rounds of significant change over the past decades, but in many cases this resulted in little more than the reshuffling of tasks and personnel, rather than reforms aimed at streamlining and making the security apparatus more efficient and accountable. When the Federal Tax Police Service was disbanded in 2003, its assets and personnel were transferred to a new Federal Service, the FSKN. Similarly, FAPSI, which was abolished at the same time, was distributed between a number of already existing services and the FSB and FSO in particular. The MVD interior troops, which had long been seen as outmoded and inefficient, were reassigned wholesale to a new organization, the FSNG, in 2016.
The maintenance of a large number of force structures throughout the post-Soviet era, in spite of several rounds of reorganization, has meant that a crucial problem pertaining to the Russian security sector has not been dealt with. This is the lack of coordination and cooperation between the different services, whose functions are often overlapping. To cite but two examples, several Russian force structures share responsibility for the areas of counter-terrorism and counter-drug operations. According to Russian law, the FSB, MVD, FSO, SVR and Ministry of Defence all have a role to play in counter-terrorism (RUSI 2007). In 2016 the newly created FSNG was added to this list. Force structures with a stake in counternarcotics included the FSKN until its subordination to the MVD in 2016, the MVD, the FSB and its Border Guard Service, as well as the SVR (Babaeva 2004). Problems of coordination and cooperation between the relevant agencies have continued to hamper the realization of comprehensive and effective counter-terrorism and counter-drug strategies.
The ongoing inability to coordinate the effort of Russia’s various force structures has been exacerbated by the country’s historical lack of experience in joint operations and the management of inter-agency task forces. Joint and inter-ministerial operations both in conventional warfare and low-intensity conflict, as also discussed in chapter 2, were not trained for during the Soviet period. Post-Soviet Russian ambitions towards developing such capabilities, which are commonplace between Western military organizations and civilian agencies, only started to emerge in recent years during large-scale exercises and operations (Norberg 2015).
Lack of coordination and overlapping functions between different force structures have created inefficiencies, leading to ‘vast amounts of duplication and waste’, as Mark Kramer has put it (2005: 219). This caused significant failures and loss of life, especially in Russian counter-terrorism efforts over the past decades. During both Chechen campaigns the lack of coordination between the different agencies created significant problems (Kramer 2005: 217–19). During the Beslan school siege, poor inter-agency coordination, and in particular between the FSB and MVD, resulted in a lack of operational command and control. This allowed vigilante action to significantly influence the course of events, leading to the death of more than 300 people, including many children (Forster 2006). When it comes to counternarcotics, lack of inter-agency coordination caused the death of an MVD spetsnaz operative and the wounding of two FSKN officers during an operation against an organized crime group in Nizhnii Novgorod in 2006. Being unaware of each other’s actions, the parties opened fire, mistaking each other for members of the criminal gang (Rushev 2006).
Being aware of the problems created by poor coordination between the various force structures, the Russian leadership has implemented numerous efforts to alleviate the situation. In addition to the training of large-scale, multi-agency operations during exercises from the second part of the 2000s onwards, efforts have included the creation of various supra-agency coordinating bodies. Following a number of significant terrorist events within the Russian Federation, including Beslan and the theatre hostage crisis in Moscow in 2002, new counter-terrorism legislation adopted in 2006 assigned the FSB as the main agency in charge of countering terrorism. Alongside the new law, a new National Counterterrorism Committee was established in the same year, which was tasked with both the coordination of all agencies involved in counter-terrorism activities and the shaping of policies and legislation in this sphere. Headed by the director of the FSB, membership in the committee includes, amongst others, the ministers of defence, interior, foreign affairs, emergency situations (MChS), justice, health, education and transport as well as the directors of the SVR, FSO, the Prosecutor General, top military leaders, the deputy heads of the presidential administration and Security Council and deputy speakers of both houses of parliament (Saradzhyan 2006: 177).
When it comes to counternarcotics, a new permanent coordinating body, the State Anti-Drug Committee, was created in 2007. The intention was to improve inter-agency coordination in this area, also in recognition that a balanced approach to the problem, which did not overemphasize the law-enforcement element, was needed. Under the chairmanship of the FSKN director, the committee’s membership included the leaders of most force structures, as well as the heads of relevant civilian bodies, such as the ministers of health and social development, education and science, and economic development. The committee’s tasks also included the control of regional anti-drugs commissions and the preparation and presentation of proposals for improving anti-drug policy to the president (Renz 2011: 61–2). The creation of such committees can be seen as a step in the right direction. However, as they coordinate activities at the federal level, their effectiveness in improving inter-agency cooperation on the ground is far from clear. Moreover, the creation of supra-agency bodies does nothing to deal with the issue of duplication and overlapping functions. In 2014, the National Defence Control Centre was established in Moscow. Enabling the coordination of efforts by all force structures, headed by the Ministry of Defence and including other economic, social and political authorities, the Centre was created to facilitate a ‘whole government approach’ to a large range of security challenges (Giles 2016: 25–6). Whether this Centre will lead to substantive improvements in coordination between the various forces involved in crisis situations is a question for the future (Tsymbal and Zatsepin 2015).
A significant factor accounting for ongoing problems in cooperation between the force structures is inter-service rivalry. The process of reshuffling, merging, disbanding and recreating various force structures throughout the post-Soviet era only exacerbated this problem. The abovementioned duplication and overlap of tasks across several agencies inevitably leads to competition, because the directors of such agencies fear the encroachment of other structures into their sphere of authority. Matters of resource allocation and lobbying for an appropriate share of the budget have been an important bone of contention between the leadership of different force structures (Kalyev 2002; Kramer 2002; Galeotti 2013: 6). The wholesale dissolution of some powerful force structures, such as FAPSI, the Border Guard Service, the Federal Tax Police Service and most recently the FSKN, reinforced the need for lobbying by the force structures’ leaderships on behalf of their institutions and for currying favour with the political leadership. Such a dynamic inevitably has come at the expense of prioritizing true reform and efficiency in encouraging rivalry, rather than cooperation.