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On 11 September at 0550 hours an attack was made against the training center for the use of the missile troops and artillery in the village of Mulino (Nizhegorod Oblast). As Yaroslav Roshchupkin, the press secretary for the command of the Western Military Area, commented for the mass media, unidentified persons sneaked in behind the deputy watch officer at the checkpoint, hit him on the head, and took his bayonet knife. They then attempted to penetrate the military unit's territory, but they were taken into custody by the watch guard that had taken up "arms." The motives for the attack and the composition of the group of criminals are not being reported. But if one has followed the history of the Mulino garrison, sufficiently clear assumptions can be made.
Reserve Major
By a directive of the commander-in-chief of the Ground Troops of
The Mulino garrison is given special attention by the local law enforcement organs: all kinds of emergencies are always occurring there. Here are several facts.
In
Recently a platoon commander from a local military unit during a celebratory meal for visitors from Dagestan shot them with a standard-issue weapon. As reported in the press, his acquaintances from the same republic drove up to the house where the 25-year-old Dagestan native lives. A 23-year-old contract military service member, a Dagestan native, was at the wheel. There were two civilians - residents of this republic - also in the car.
The officer led his guests into the house. During the celebratory mean the conversation turned to the debt that the 25-year-old military service member was to have repaid to his acquaintances. Having stood up, the officer shouted "Makarov" and opened fire. As a result the 23-year-old contract driver was killed at the site and the two civilians were wounded and hospitalized in local hospitals.
We could go on and on with such examples. But an attack against a combat military unit was carried out for the first time in Mulino.
Recently "SP" wrote about the bloody tragedy in the military unit in the Dagestan city of Buynaksk that occurred on 5 September. We sounded the alarm at that time: over the past 10 years this was the first incident of a terrorist attack against a combat military unit. There had been underhanded raids against columns on the march; and on
"SP" then took a critical attitude toward the formal reaction of the country's leadership and the
Not even a week had passed before life demonstrated that these measures were clearly inadequate: the attacks against military units have continued. Moreover, they were not occurring only in the "hot" regions.
Recently, the mass media in Leningrad Oblast contained a report that local law enforcement organs had arrested 18 people, who are suspected of an attack against the military unit. According to the information from the investigation, about ten passenger cars arrived in the midst of day at the checkpoint for one of the military units in the
The statement from the military investigative directorate of the Investigative Committee under
Fortunately, the duty officer managed to summon an armed detachment. As the military arrived they opened warning fire from their automatic rifles. After this the attackers climbed a fence, got into their automobiles, and fled. The injured major suffered a fractured skull, concussion, and contusions; he was in fair condition and taken to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, an OMON (riot squad) detachment of 20 men and OVD (Internal Affairs Department) teams for the
Taking a liberal stand with the criminal world, the never-ending slips of the tongue suggesting that crime has no nationality, and seeking to shift nationalist and political crimes to those committed "on a social basis" - these actions only encourage the extremists. The consequences may be terrible. The recent emergency situation in Mulino is all too familiar: for the first time an attack has been made against a missile unit. Among the next steps open to the extremists might be to seize the "button" and nuclear missile blackmail, or yet another terrorist strike.
From the "SP" file:
The American "RAND" research organization has published the results of its work entitled "Nets, Net Warfare, and Terrorism in the Information Epoch," in which a comprehensive analysis of modern-day terrorism is provided.
The "RAND" specialists define nuclear terrorism as the use or the threat of the use by individuals, groups, or organizations of nuclear weapons or radioactive materials, or as the commission of a variety of hostile actions at facilities of nuclear infrastructure in order to inflict great loss of human life, significant ecological damage, or having a profound psychological impact upon the population in order to achieve certain political or economic goals. The manifestation of the threat of nuclear terrorism is largely caused by the extensive proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is sufficient to recall that over the past six decades eight countries have acquired them and that they have manufactured nearly 125,000 nuclear warheads.
The first attempt to seize nuclear weapons and the threat to use them for political ends took place more than 40 years ago, when a group of right-leaning French generals who were displeased with De Gaulle's policies planned to seize a nuclear warhead that was at a test range in the Sahara Desert and to then present
An act of terrorism that was committed in 1965 in
In the early 1990s the actions of nationalist groups within several of the republics during the collapse of the USSR represented a real threat to international security. According to assessments of foreign experts, at that time Soviet tactical nuclear weapons (TYaO), amounting to 15,000 to 18,000 units, were deployed within the territories of all 15 republics of the USSR. In several of the republics nationalist forces openly called for the seizure of the nuclear weapons located within their territory. The understanding of the reality of the threat prompted the General Staff of
In
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[Description of Source: Moscow Svobodnaya Pressa in Russian -- Website carrying political, economic, and sociocultural news; URL: http://www.svpressa.ru/]
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