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Further Reading

FSB Organization

In May 1997, the President signed an edict on the reorganization of the FSB. According to this document, five departments were introduced in replacement of the existing directorates and services. There were formerly 34 directorates in the FSB. They have been transformed into departments to enhance manageability. According to news reports, within a few months thereafter the foreign intelligence service, the border, and FAPSI were possibly expected to be co-joined with the FSV [restoring the KGB almost in full] but this did not occur.

Deputy Director

Colonel General Nikolai Kovalev was deputy director with responsibility for the Investigations Directorate, Directorate for Economic Counterintelligence, and Operational Reconnaissance Directorate.

Investigations Directorate

In 1992 the FSB Investigations Directorate was abolished, but in 1995 it was reestablished. The unit takes an active part in combating illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs, corruption, and crimes in the sphere of the economy and organized crime. It currently has more than 1,000 ongoing cases under investigation.

Directorate for Economic Counterintelligence

Operational Reconnaissance Directorate

Military Counterintelligence Directorate

Colonel General Aleksey Molyakov is chief of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service Military Counterintelligence Directorate, a component of the FSB Counterintelligence Department with about 6,000 staffers. Along with the security organs in the troops, it is directly subordinate to the Russian Federation FSB. The Directorate works in the Russian Armed Forces to counter the efforts of foreign intelligence agencies to acquire Russian state and military secrets. Directorate staff has been directly involved in the investigation of about a third of the Russian citizen who have exposed by Russian counterintelligence in recent years.

The Military Counterintelligence Directorate has directorates and sections in each branch of service, combat arm, military district (fleet), army, corps, and division. Military Counterintelligence Directorate representatives also work in individual military units -- from regiments to battalions. Under authority of the statute on military counterintelligence organs, the Directorate is permitted to conduct intelligence on threats to the security of Russia and its Armed Forces by operating networks of agents in foreign countries.

Ensuring nuclear security in the Russian Armed Forces is a top priority for Military Counterintelligence staffers. Military Counterintelligence units are working in the armed forces troops to counter and avert extremist or other dangerous tendencies to ensure that, in the event of a deterioration in the political situation in the country, there whould be no loss of controllability of the Russian Armed Forces and to neutralize any attempts to involve the army in a political confrontation.

The Military Counterintelligence Directorate, in collaboration with other agencies, is involved in work against organized crime, corruption, smuggling, and illegal trafficking in weapons and drugs. The situation in Chechnya involved the Directoate in establishing the whereabouts of Russian servicemen and civilians seized by gunmen and securing their release.

Oblast Administration

The FSB is one of the few Russian government institutions that retains the vertical structure of federal control, with Administrations at the Oblast level, despite the desire of local leaders to subordinate these territorial directorates to their interests.

The Chelyabinsk Oblast Administration of the FSB has a staff of slightly more than 300 officers are working in the entire oblast. The Administration previously had a counterintelligence division, which has been transformed into a counterintelligence operations division with a broader range of responsibilities. The counterintelligence division was based on functions of defense, but the counterintelligence operations division presupposes not only the defense of the state against the actions of foreign intelligence services, but also carrying out of operations to exert an effect on those services. The Administration's former economic counterintelligence division has been transformed into the division for counterintelligence at strategic objectives, which includes closed cities and other objectives. It provides for the security of objectives in the defense complex, the protection of secrets, and the prevention of diversionary and sabotage activities.

Directorate "T" Antiterrorism Directorate

Directorate "T" is responsible for counter-terrorim activities. The FSB Antiterrorist Center is a special unit, formed in 1995, that encompasses FSB combat and operational counter-terrorist units. In 1996 the Center responded to 420 alerts that terrorist acts were being prepared, including 35 alerts of possible terrorist acts against foreign citizens. During that year the Antiterrorist Center carried out more than 200 special and combat-operation operations, including actionds directed against 11 organized criminal groups engaged in illegally supplying arms to Central Russia from the North Caucasus republics and the Baltic countries.

Russia's premier counterterrorist group, Alpha is now assigned to the FSB, after changes in subordination and status following Alpha's ambiguous role in the failed August 1991 Soviet coup. Alpha comprises a main group of 250 personnel as well as smaller detachments in Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar and Khabarovsk. Before the fighting started in Chechnya Russian armed forces did not intend to resort to a full scale intervention. An operation led by the Federal Counterintelligence Agency (FSK), and secretly supported by Russian Army military contingents enlisted from divisions near Moscow, supported opposition forces operating in Chechnya. These forces, led by opposition Provisional Council leader Umar Avturkhanov, fought Dudayev's forces with the intent to either defeat or at least soften up Dudayev and take Grozny. But the opposition attack on Grozny on 26 and 27 November 1994 was a catastrophe, and by 01 December it was clear that the opposition would be unable to oust Dudayev. Subsequently Alpha's mid-June 1995 attempt to storm the Budennovsk hospital and free hundreds of hostages seized by Chechen guerrillas ended unsuccessfully.

Directorate of Records and Archives

The Directorate of Records and Archives maintains the records of the FSB, including files on personnel, as well as assets and targets.