In the town of Zaraysk near Moscow there is the smallest Kremlin, but it’s not the size, but the strong impression it makes, the magnificent museum, churches and interesting history: the spool is small, but expensive. And the landscapes around you cannot be described in words! The Zaraisky Kremlin is one of the best preserved in Russia. Built by Italian architects in the first third of the 16th century by order of Vasily III.
The Zaraisky Kremlin is part of the so-called Zasechnaya Line. This is a complex of fortress settlements built to protect the borders of the state from raids by nomads. It includes, for example, the Tula, Nizhny Novgorod and Serpukhov Kremlin (which has not survived to this day). In 2022 they are going to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the “Big Zasechnaya Trait”. The date is very arbitrary, since all these fortified cities were not built simultaneously and it took more than a decade to finalize such a powerful border. However, a date has been set (if you believe the Internet, it is “tied” to the anniversary of the Tula Kremlin) and by this date it is necessary to put in order all the surviving fortifications included in it.
Walls of the Zaraisk Kremlin
In particular, large-scale restoration work is being carried out on the Zaraisk Kremlin. The reconstruction is carried out in an original way: all the bricks are examined, the most poorly preserved ones are replaced, and a layer of dark red paint is applied on top. From a distance they look beautiful, but up close the feeling of brickwork, and with it the ancient fortress, disappears. By the way, from a distance it looks absolutely gorgeous. Beautiful views can be seen simply from the sides of the roads. They even install special “Zaraisk” signs and make “pockets” for stopping traffic so that you can take a photo, like a postcard. Only while the landscaping work is going on, the landscape looks terrible. In the foreground there are heaps of sand and gravel that spoil the footage. But this is temporary.
Panorama of Zaraysk
The entire territory of the Kremlin is a museum. It is better to walk along it with a guide. Moreover, the guides are knowledgeable and excellent at telling the history of the area.
History of the museum
The museum was founded in 1918, almost immediately after the October Revolution. It is named after the main object of the museum exhibition - the Zaraisk Kremlin. This is a defensive structure erected in the 16th century by order of Vasily II, Grand Duke of Moscow.
The main exhibition was placed in the building of the former government offices on the territory of the Kremlin. There is a unique archaeological collection there, it includes unique monuments of primitive art - bison figurines and “Paleolithic Venuses”, they were discovered on the territory of the Zaraysk Upper Paleolithic site1.
In the past year, events in Kazan and Perm forced us to radically reconsider existing approaches to the safety of educational facilities. Currently, acts of armed violence in the educational environment are considered crimes of a terrorist nature. At the same time, individual officials responsible for ensuring the safety of social facilities, despite the tragedies that have occurred, are not fully aware of the burden of responsibility that lies on them and often do not comply with the requirements for anti-terrorist protection of the facilities entrusted to them. In the December issue of the Security World magazine, First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of Regional Security of the Moscow Region, Vladimir Gerasimenko, spoke about how relevant the practice of applying administrative measures for non-compliance with decisions of the Anti-Terrorism Commission of the region is, especially in terms of ensuring the security of educational facilities.
“IT CANNOT BE LEAVED TO evacuate”
where should I put the comma?
“Telephone terrorists” are gradually mastering digital technology; now anonymous messages about threats to commit terrorist acts are sent to email addresses.
It has become more difficult to identify and bring to justice such fans of “joking”, since the sender can be located anywhere in the world.
Current instructions require the director of a facility, upon receiving a threat of a terrorist attack, to immediately “ensure the evacuation” of all people from the facility.
THIS RULE IS OFTEN UNDERSTANDED AS A REQUIREMENT FOR EVERYONE TO LEAVE A “MINED” BUILDING IMMEDIATELY.
How justified are such response measures, and what are the possible solutions for the manager, where is it correct to put a comma in the title of this material - the opinion of the staff of the Anti-Terrorism Commission of the Moscow Region.
Vladimir GERASIMENKO,
First Deputy Head of the Main Directorate
regional security of the Moscow region
THE INTENSITY OF FALSE REPORTS ELECTRONICALLY IS INCREASING
Since February of this year, the email addresses of various organizations in the Moscow region have received an avalanche of messages about allegedly planted explosive devices in crowded places.
Everything was “mined” - kindergartens, schools and universities, hospitals and clinics, administrative buildings, transport facilities, registry offices and MFCs, and sometimes even entire residential areas.
Lyubertsy especially suffered. False reports about the threat of terrorist attacks in this urban district were received almost every day, even on weekends and holidays.
Other municipalities in the region also did not escape this surge in criminal activity - in Balashikha, Odintsovo, Khimki, Krasnogorsk, Mytishchi, Podolsk, Naro-Fominsk, Ruza, Chekhov, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Sergiev Posad, Istra, Shchelkovo, Kolomna, In Klin, Zhukovsky, Dmitrov, Elektrostal, Dubna, and Mozhaisk, local authorities were forced to stop classes for schoolchildren and students and evacuate visitors from shopping centers and other facilities.
In most cases, messages in the form of one or two phrases, such as “all schools in the city are mined, in two hours they will explode,” were sent to well-known email addresses, information about which is publicly available and can be received by any Internet user.
A particular sophistication of attackers is to send threatening messages directly to the addresses of emergency services - to the 112 system, to the duty units of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the Internal Affairs Directorate and the FSB. As a change, several such messages were sent to other regions (Barnaul, Krasnodar) - but in all cases their essence remained unchanged - “in such and such a city in the Moscow region, such and such objects have been mined, evacuate people urgently.”
In a short period of time, about six hundred such messages were recorded, and about 10 thousand organizations and institutions of various forms of ownership became their “victims”.
Over the past few months of this year, due to mining threats, a total of more than 800 thousand people were evacuated.
Fortunately, none of these reports were confirmed. No explosive devices were found at any site.
Often the absurdity of all these forced checks was that as soon as the dog handlers completed their inspection of the building, another “signal” was literally immediately received and the verification activities began all over again.
Responsibility for knowingly false reporting of an act of terrorism is provided for in Article 207 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. To the credit of law enforcement officers, several “villains” were still identified and detained, but these, as a rule, turned out to be mentally unstable people who were impressed by the wave of mass evacuations, and they also decided to take part in this “fun prank.”
At the same time, more than a hundred criminal cases initiated under this article still remain unsolved. Unfortunately, it has not yet been possible to identify and punish the main organizers of this action.
REAL DAMAGE FROM “UNREAL” THREATS
Needless to say, the psychological tension and general dissatisfaction that arises among the population when some incomprehensible force interferes with people’s daily plans, forcing them to leave their place of work, stop visiting a doctor, interrupt lunch or stop shopping, urgently evacuating from a “mined” facility .
It is especially unpleasant to receive such threats against educational facilities. While high school students are allowed to go home during evacuation, children from elementary grades and preschool institutions have to be picked up by their parents. We have received many complaints and requests related to this problem - some parents are outraged that they have problems at work, some are dissatisfied with disruptions in the educational process, and some even reported that they were forced to provide their children with psychological help.
The material damage from this type of mailing is also quite large, the region’s economy, small and medium-sized businesses are just beginning to recover from the consequences of last year’s lockdown, and here comes another misfortune - visitors and customers must be unscheduled evacuated, establishments must be closed to check for the presence of mortgaged documents, revenue falls , unforeseen expenses increase.
The question arises: who benefits from this and why is it all organized? The answer is obvious.
The expert community has long been discussing the thesis that we are actually now in a state of so-called “hybrid war”, the essence of which is to suppress the enemy and cause economic damage to him, without resorting to military action, but using hidden forms of ideological influence on the population, as well as obvious influence on the economy of an unfriendly state (sanctions).
It is obvious that such mass mailings, as a rule, arriving from IP addresses located abroad, are clearly not simple Internet hooliganism, this is a systematic work aimed at exhausting government agencies and the population with the endless implementation of evacuation measures in conditions when everyone intuitively understands the senselessness of the measures taken.
In addition, this is a test of the strength and stability of our public administration system, the search and identification of weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
I probably won’t be revealing a big secret if I point out that our systemic problem is insufficient flexibility of regulatory regulation and the inability to quickly adjust our legal levers and management tools to newly emerging threats.
The technology of causing damage by sending false signals about possible terrorist attacks is being honed so far only in the Moscow region, but it is not difficult to assume that at a certain time “H” signals will begin to arrive that all schools, kindergartens, shopping centers and other places of mass gathering of people all over Russia suddenly became “mined.”
What response measures will we take - urgently evacuate the entire population of our huge country? Everyone to the streets? And further, what – collapse, economic paralysis, mass psychosis? Are these not the goals set for our opponents to achieve in a “hybrid war”?
“Conservatism” in a positive sense is “stability,” but the above examples show how the lack of an immediate response of the legal and regulatory system to a changing security situation can lead to dire consequences.
In these conditions, we set ourselves the task of developing and implementing as quickly as possible a more flexible mechanism that allows us to adequately respond to all kinds of threats about the possible commission of a terrorist act.
As the famous plumber character said, “the system needs to be changed...”.
I will try to reveal what the problems are here and what solutions are offered.
OPTIONS FOR SOLVING THE PROBLEM
While the relevant services are trying to find the intruders, authorities and facility managers face a dilemma - to evacuate or not to evacuate people from the facilities indicated in the messages.
The decrees of the Government of the Russian Federation regulating the issues of anti-terrorist protection of educational, healthcare, social security, culture, sports, etc. facilities and the instructions developed in accordance with them contain the same instructions almost verbatim:
“The official who directly supervises the activities of workers at the facility (territory) (the person replacing him), with .... receiving information about the threat of a terrorist act at a facility (territory) ensures... safe and unhindered evacuation of workers, students and other persons located at the facility...” (PPRF 1006, Art. 42 p.b)
Based on these norms, law enforcement agencies require the unconditional evacuation of all people at the site in the event of receiving any threat of a possible terrorist attack.
On the one hand, the rationale for these requirements is clear - the special services need to thoroughly inspect the building and, if found, neutralize explosive devices. When strangers are in the building, these activities are significantly complicated and create additional risks for the civilian population.
When a message is received, no one can know how real the possibility of committing a terrorist attack is, and the anonymity of the applicant only exacerbates the nature of this threat. In such situations, responsible officials - managers of facilities have no choice - they must follow the instructions and remove all people there from the building.
However, the events in Kazan showed that not everything is so simple - it’s scary to imagine if the director of gymnasium No. 175, Amina Valeeva, would unquestioningly follow the accepted practice and, having received information that the facility was under attack, would give instructions for an urgent evacuation. In violation of the requirements of PRF Resolution 1006 in the current situation, she made the only right decision - she gave instructions to lock and barricade the doors to all classrooms. Did this courageous woman understand at that time that by violating the instructions she risked falling under criminal charges such as “abuse of official authority” or “negligence”?
So, the need arises for urgent amendments to the above-mentioned regulations at the federal level.
More detailed regulation of the actions of the facility manager upon receipt of a message about a possible terrorist attack is required; it is necessary to clarify the algorithms of actions of security forces and emergency services, depending on the source of information and taking into account the general operational situation, both at the facility and in the territory of the populated area, it is advisable to take into account the level of anti-terrorism security of this facility, equipment with engineering and technical means, etc.
We have prepared relevant initiatives and sent them to the National Anti-Terrorism Committee.
At the same time, without waiting for changes in the federal regulatory framework, the Moscow Region has taken measures to neutralize such threats and minimize damage from them.
Here, you should first pay attention to the fact that the above norms instruct the head of the facility, upon receiving information about the threat of a terrorist attack, to “ensure evacuation” (literally).
But in Russian the word “ensure” means “to create conditions.” Hence, you will agree that there is a very big difference between “evacuate” and “create conditions for evacuation.”
In our opinion, despite the opposite position of fellow law enforcement officers, such a literal interpretation of the norm allows us to more adequately respond to incoming threats.
The apparatus of the Anti-Terrorism Commission of the Moscow Region, together with the municipal ATK of the Lyubertsy urban district (as the “victim” itself), has developed an approximate algorithm of actions when receiving a message about the possibility of committing a terrorist act on social infrastructure facilities.
In accordance with this algorithm, all such signals are immediately communicated not only to operational services and the head of the institution, but also to members of the anti-terrorism commission of the city district, which includes the heads of the local law enforcement unit. And while the school director “ensures evacuation” (that is, creates conditions for this event to be carried out), members of the municipal ATK collectively decide on-line how real this threat is and how urgent is the need to take people out into the street in this case.
Not least important when making a decision is the information prepared in advance and available to the municipal ATK about the fulfillment of all requirements for anti-terrorism security at a given facility.
For example, if a school has a checkpoint, i.e. two lines of control, professional physical security, equipped with inspection and control means, video surveillance and perimeter fencing, i.e. if the penetration of unauthorized persons and the planting of an explosive device at this facility is practically reduced to zero, then there is clearly no need to evacuate students.
It is taken into account that an emergency exit from the school building will inevitably cause a massive crowd of people on the exit routes and in the surrounding area. And this factor entails a more serious threat to the lives of children than their presence in a fortified and protected building[2].
An analysis is also carried out of the source of information, through what channels it was received, whether there is feedback from a “well-wisher”, etc.
Then, after an immediate assessment of all factors of the operational situation, a collegial decision is made whether to evacuate or not, and separately for each specific facility. So, if there are 44 schools in Lyubertsy and a signal was received that all the schools in the city were mined, then the decision to evacuate is made for each school, taking into account the above circumstances.
An essential detail of this algorithm is that all urgent measures to inspect objects with the involvement of dog handlers and technical specialists are carried out without fail, regardless of the decision on evacuation.
By the decision of the regional ATK, a similar algorithm of actions and a standard package of accompanying documents were recommended for use throughout the region.
However, it should be noted that not all municipal ATKs decided to use the recommendations of the regional apparatus - several municipalities, influenced by the categorically opposite opinion of the security forces, approved their decisions - to evacuate in all cases, upon receipt of any threat and without any “ifs”.
The question is, of course, ambiguous and even debatable - no one wants to take responsibility for determining whether a threat is real or not, no one wants to make a decision on which people’s lives may depend.
But the experience of fighting terrorism in Russia shows that not a single explosion has yet been carried out with prior notification to the special services. Terrorist attacks always occur suddenly and in the most unexpected places.
Facts are a stubborn thing - as soon as we stopped organizing mass evacuations, the number of false reports about mining in the Moscow region sharply declined, of course - who is interested in sending out threats if they do not bring the desired effect and despite these attempts to destabilize the situation, all organizations and institutions continue to operate as normal.
And lastly, in some countries it was possible to completely eliminate the occurrence of hostage-taking, thanks to the prohibition established by law - no negotiations with terrorists. Maybe it would be appropriate to use an analogy to solve the problem under consideration?
I would like all this to be taken into account by the working group of the Russian Ministry of Education when developing a unified approach to the anti-terrorist protection of educational facilities, as part of the implementation of the President’s order dated May 11, 2021.
Exposition
The museum is rich in exhibits reflecting the life of the noble class - these are portraits and objects of noble life of the second half of the 18th - early 20th centuries, brought here from the family nests of Zaraisky district. There are also portraits of local merchants, and even a collection of foreign art.
Part of the museum is the memorial house of A.S. Golubkina. Golubkina was an outstanding sculptor of her time. Another exhibition space is the Darovoye estate, where Dostoevsky visited as a child.
Another large exhibition presents a collection of Russian art from three centuries - XVIII, XIX and XX. First of all, this is a unique portrait painting. The main masterpiece of this collection is the ceremonial portrait of Countess M.A. Keller by Leon Bakst.
There is also the art of itinerants, such as V.M. Maksimov, I.I. Shishkin, V.K. Byalynitsky-Birul, S.V. Ivanov. There are also objects of decorative and applied art.
Tour of the walls
One of the most interesting and spectacular points in the program of visiting the Zaraisky Kremlin is the climb to its fortress wall. You can go up accompanied by a guide as part of a sightseeing tour of the fortress territory.
Visitors to the excursion have the opportunity to take a walk along the military course of the wall, as well as visit inside the Nikolskaya Tower, where a small historical exhibition with diagrams of old Russian fortresses is located. In the process, the guide tells a lot of interesting things about the history of the Zaraisk Kremlin and Zaraisk itself, about the features of fortification architecture, as well as about the tricks and techniques that allowed the defenders to hold back the enemy’s onslaught.
From the wall there is a magnificent view of the inner territory of the fortress and the attractions located on it: St. John the Baptist Cathedral, St. Nicholas Cathedral, the building of the Zaraisk Theological School and others.
But the views outside, towards the city, are not impressive. If you are interested in good views of the city, you should visit the local water tower, from the top of which the whole of Zaraysk is visible in full view.
