Alexei Ramm
Izvestia, September 15, 2016, p. 1
The 47th division of territorial defense was formed in Sevastopol. Its servicemen will be able to help the law-enforcement agencies to combat terrorists and saboteurs, to defend strategically important objects and to liquidate consequences of natural disasters and catastrophes if necessary. The backbone of the unique military formation is constituted not by professional soldiers and officers but reservists whom the Defense Ministry drafts to military refresher courses a few times per year.
DIVISION OF TERRITORIAL DEFENSE WAS FORMED IN SEVASTOPOL
The 47th division of territorial defense was formed in Sevastopol. Its servicemen will be able to help the law-enforcement agencies to combat terrorists and saboteurs, to defend strategically important objects and to liquidate consequences of natural disasters and catastrophes if necessary. The backbone of the unique military formation is constituted not by professional soldiers and officers but reservists whom the Defense Ministry drafts to military refresher courses a few times per year.
Representative of the Defense Ministry familiar with the situation reported:
– Formation of the division was completed at the end of August. In the course of Caucasus-2016 exercises one of battalions of the division was alerted and started fulfillment of combat tasks. Servicemen took military and civil objects under guard not only in Sevastopol but all over Crimea. They also had exercises in detention and liquidation of the enemy saboteurs.
According to Editor-in-Chief of Arsenal Otechestva magazine Victor Murakhovsky. Until recently the tasks of territorial defense (defense of military and civil objects, combating of reconnaissance and subversion groups and prevention of subversions) were divided among the Interior Ministry, Interior Forces (Russian Guard now), Federal Security Service, Emergency Situations Ministry and other security agencies. But now it is decided not to disperse the functions among the agencies but to transfer the main part of them to the Defense Ministry.
Murakhovsky said:
– Formation of the first units of territorial defense in the Russian army began between 2014 and 2015. Recent exercises Caucasus-2016 became a check of the work done. Although there were certain difficulties, top-ranking officials of the Defense Ministry remained content with the obtained result in general. In peacetime a division of territorial defense is a skeleton military unit where only a few professional servicemen serve. But in case of beginning of combat operations or natural disasters the necessary quantity of reservists is drafted to the division.
The precise organizational structure of the new division is not known but it supposedly includes several battalions of territorial defense servicemen of which move at trucks and are armed with small arms and several mortars.
Interestingly, in case of alarm reservists arrive to the 47th division not only from Crimea but also from other regions of Russia. Representative of the Black Sea fleet explained that reservists were delivered to Caucasus-2016 exercises by military transport aviation.
