Friday, June 14, 2019

Many Russian Police Officers Said Ready to Resign after Kremlin Fired Two MVD Generals


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.

No comments:

Post a Comment