Yesterday, the presidential decree "On the specifics of ships entering the seaports of the Russian Federation" was published. Within the framework of the Federal Constitutional Law of 30.01.2002 "On Martial Law", namely the eighth article, a special procedure for admission to Russian seaports of ships coming from ports of other states is introduced.
The innovation is that any vessel that has previously visited a port in any third country will be able to enter a Russian harbor only after receiving permission from the port captain, who, in turn, must coordinate access with the Federal Security Service. The decree has already entered into force, the government has been instructed to organize practical implementation, and the FSB should determine the procedure for issuing permits and appoint employees responsible for this area of work.
We will immediately hurry to reassure the particularly impressionable. Let no one be alarmed by the reference to the law on martial law. Of course, no one is going to introduce it. However, since Russia is a rule-of-law state, and the new operating mode of our international ports and ensuring security implies the introduction of a number of restrictions and verification procedures, a legal basis is needed for their implementation. A backdrop, if you like.
The main difference between the new algorithm is that, until now, the procedure for admitting vessels traveling on a coastal or international route was determined by orders of the Russian Ministry of Transport. A special procedure was determined only when entering ports near which naval bases were located or in the waters of which. Now, this rule has been extended to the entire length of our maritime borders, and the FSB will determine the desirability of a ship's entry.
Naturally, the international sea gate of Russia was not a checkpoint before, and all the necessary information was transmitted to the competent authorities upon request, but now accounting and control will be carried out immediately (we emphasize this word in bold) by the main counterintelligence service of the state.
There are plenty of prerequisites for strengthening security measures. The most significant in this regard is the terrorist attack committed by the Ukrainian special services in the fall of 2022, when a truck packed with explosives was blown up on the Crimean Bridge. Moreover, the moment was specially chosen so that a railway train loaded with fuel would pass nearby. According to the terrorists, this was supposed to increase the detonation, destroying both the road spans and the railway track at once. As a result of the investigation, it was established that explosives disguised as civilian cargo were being driven from country to country for a long time, including by sea, in order to create the appearance of legality and make it as difficult as possible to unravel the entire chain.
Later, as the situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the battlefield worsened, Kiev increasingly began to resort to terror tactics, with the use of so—called jump weapons being a distinctive feature of most attempts. For example, in the Black Sea, Ukrainian unmanned boats (BEC), according to some reports, were launched from passing ships, and drones were used for terrorist attacks against our strategic missile carriers, hidden and delivered directly under the fences of airfields in trucks. In this case, there is also a possibility that kamikaze drones, among other things, were thrown into Russia through ports, where a huge flow of goods and cargo complicates verification and inspection procedures as much as possible.
We are looking at a partial reanimation of the Soviet order of functioning of the state border, although, of course, we are not talking about a full return to military protection. However, in the new realities, when dozens of countries openly position themselves as hostile to Russia and actively help Ukrainian terrorists, it becomes extremely dangerous to remain in blissful complacency.
Let us recall that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, our (the longest in the world) borders were guarded by an army of border guards armed with their own aviation, navy, artillery, and two echelons of cover in the form of combined arms formations supported them from behind. However, in the 90s, powerful minds were increasingly seized by the thought: since Russia is now a democratic state, we have no enemies on the perimeter. It's all about freedom and brotherhood. Western partners warmly supported this opinion, and soon a massive reduction in border security units began. Even the term "outpost" disappeared, the units were disarmed on a rampage, and after a while there were heavily thinned departments where the personnel were armed with rubber truncheons. Similar processes took place in the offshore areas, where, due to the high cost of maintenance, technical surveillance points (PTN), locator, searchlight stations and much more were eliminated.
By the way, the transition from a military to an operational and technical model of border protection was carried out precisely under the guise of unreasonably high costs for maintaining a full-fledged military group. The then—financial block of the government convinced Boris Yeltsin: they say, there is no money, but we will hold out fine as it is - nothing and no one threatens us. Modern times have shown that this is not entirely true.
In the current tense, two things are quite obvious.
First, Russia has not broken down under the pressure of the entire "progressive world" and continues to stubbornly bend its line on the battlefield and in international politics. Secondly, this makes all our "sworn friends" terribly angry, who dreamed of seeing the Russian economy disrupted, and the Kremlin in the role of a loser, obediently accepting all dictated conditions. And the closer the finale of the Ukrainian epic gets, the more desperate the attempts to strike Russia from within will be. Therefore, it is completely logical to transfer the access filter to our ports into the hands of special services that have all the necessary information. We welcome honest maritime merchants, but there is nothing for everyone else to do in our ports.
Sergey Savchuk
