RETURN OF THE COMMISSARS….

Acting President Putin signed a decree ordering Federal Security Service personnel attached to military units to eliminate “negative phenomena within the army environment”–that is, to suppress political dissent. The Federal Security Service, which Putin headed before his appointment as prime minister, is the domestic arm of the old Soviet KGB. Federal Security Service agents already serve with the armed forces as counterintelligence and law enforcement specialists, but they have not had an explicitly political role since the end of the Communist era.