The extent to which it is extreme is evident in the published decree. The document raises the status of the FSB as an enforcement authority. Former FSB departments become independent services in the FSB structure and receive their own departments and managers. The director of the FSB receives the rank of minister, and his assistants, the corresponding rank of deputy ministers.


Deputy Director of the FSB, head of the Organizational-Personnel Department, General Evgeni Lovyrev, has confirmed to the InterFax News agency that the presidential decree expands the powers of the FSB. Deputy directors and heads of services of the FSB are accorded wide powers in their relation to the government, federal bodies, the legislature, and judicial authorities.


“ The decision to reorganize is aimed at increasing the effectiveness of the special service, in accordance with the present situation, and in the interest of adequate responses to threats against the safety of Russia,” explained the Deputy Director.


Why an increase in the effectiveness of the special services is necessary, and what follows from such an increase is clear enough. If, for example, the government allocates resources for the development and introduction of the newest devices for carrying out the death penalty, there is no reason to doubt that the quantity of death sentences will increase in the near future.

The Kremlin command believes that Russia has gone too far down the road of democratic reform. So strongly do they believe this that they carry out counter-reforms in contradiction to the Russian Constitution. Chapter 4 of the Constitution provides an exhaustive list of the functions of the country’s president. What’s not there?! But in none of the 14 clauses is there even a hint that the president can supervise separate enforcement authorities, much less reform them.


The president’s present decree has the following background. On March 9th of this year, Putin issued the decree, “About the System and Structure of Federal Enforcement Authorities,”
, dividing enforcement authorities into those supervised by the president and those supervised by the government. Putin took the following agencies for himself: the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Emergency Measures, the Ministry of Justice, the External Investigation Service, the FSB, the Federal Protection Service, the Federal Migration Services, the Federal Illegal Drug Control Service, and 10 less significant federal services and agencies. In total, the president has 20 federal agencies under executive authority. The government still has 51. This decree contradicted the Constitution just as the present one does. But no one has paid this situation any special attention. The press has kept silent about the illegality of the president’s actions, indulging the personnel and officials of the reformed ministries and departments.


It is unlikely that Putin will carry out his reforms in conformity with the Constitution. Therefore, in the future, a change should be expected in the Constitution, especially Chapter 4, regulating the activity of the President of the Russian Federation. Obedient to the president, the State Duma will easily make the necessary constitutional amendments, through which the present reorganization of the FSB, if only through backdating, will be legitimized. And valorous security officers can lawfully engage in their favorite activities, which they have been itching to get back to since Andropov’s time.