Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 13 – Whether or not
Vladimir Putin’s decision to fire two senior MVD generals over the Golunov case
costs him support among the siloviki is still an open question (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/golunov-case-outcome-could-cost-putin.html),
but there is no doubt that it is prompting more junior officers to quit lest
they be ousted as well.
The
Russian police have been losing cops on the beat for some time as a result of
low salaries and poor working conditions (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/06/russian-police-regimes-first-line-of.html),
but now, Mikhail Bely and Leonid Fedorov of the URA news agency say, more are
leaving because of the generals’ dismissal (ura.news/articles/1036278271).
“If
they bosses are being fired,” these former policemen say, what hope can there
be for “simple mortals?” According to
the police union, “Many are ready to resign” because they feel that the
interior ministry and the police are no longer being protected by the powers
that be and that they too may be thrown to the wolves.
Union
leader Mikhail Pashkin says that the police are demoralized and those who can
are leaving and seeking to join the Russian Guard. There, they say, “there is
order” and officers get better pay and more support from above. “Apparently, our
government no longer ocunts on the police and thus isn’t investing in it.”
The
numbers of police seeking to leave are growing, former and present policemen
say, speaking on conditions of anonymity because they fear reprisals or the
possibility of getting new work elsewhere in government service. One former
senior officer says police are often tightly connected to their bosses, and if the
bosses are sacrificed, they won’t stay.
This
exodus will create problems for the police and those above them who rely on
their efforts. But some observers like Krill Kabanov, the head of the National
Anti-Corruption Committee, says that this trend is a positive one. The police
need to know that they aren’t above the law.
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