Anti-Russian Nationalists Must Be Held for Investigation Far Longer than Now, Retired Police Colonel Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 11 – “The number one task” in Russia today, Ruslan Ustrakhanov says, is to do away with national-territorial formations that can be the basis for challenging the territorial integrity of what he calls “the empire” or the best “common home for the peoples” of Russia will ever have.

            To that end, the retired Murmansk police colonel says, it is absolutely imperative not only to change the country’s administrative structure but also to take harsher action against those encouraged by the enemies of the country abroad to use those structures to undermine the territorial integrity of Russia (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2019/04/11/imperiya_obwij_dom_vseh_narodov/).

            Foreign forces having always used nationalism as “a weapon for the destruction of great empires,” Ustrakhanov says. “And from this it follows that the most decisive measures musut be taken against separatists and nationalists, the organizers and the instigators of mass disorders and violators of the law.”

            There must not be “any ceremony or slowness connected with the opening of legal cases and arrests of anti-state persons,” he continues. “Legal isolation of individuals will guarantee the preservation of hundreds and thousands of lives.”  And that requires going beyond current arrangements, the retired policeman says.

            At present under the Russian criminal code, those suspected of committing a crime can be held only for 48 to 72 hours.  That is simply not enough time to gather evidence against those like nationalists and separatists, and consequently, the criminal code needs to be changed to give the police more time by holding such people until the investigations can be completed.

            It shouldn’t exceed a month, but even that will help defend the empire against these threats, Ustrakhanov says, concluding that other measures will be needed as well in order to “preserve the empire, our common home. The peoples of Russian have not had and do not have a better one.”

            On the one hand, of course, this is nothing more than one policeman’s opinion based on the needs of his bureaucracy. But on the other, given its appearance in the often influential Russian Orthodox nationalist portal, his words likely presage a new move to detain those Moscow views as nationalists and separatists behind bars for far longer than at present.