MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax-AVN) - The special purpose detachment of the North Caucasus regional border guard department has been ordered to reinforce a section of the state border in the North Caucasus, the press center of the Russian Federal Border Guard Service said on Thursday.
The order was issued by service director Konstantin Totsky who announced it at a meeting with participants of the Argun special border operation late on Wednesday. The meeting was devoted to the second anniversary of the operation's beginning, an official of the press center told Interfax-Military News Agency.
Totsky did not indicate which border section would be reinforced. The situation on the Chechen border and in several other regions of the North Caucasus remains tense even despite the setting of cold weather and subsequent removal of several checkpoints, he said.
The tactics of the Itum-Kale border guard detachment and other units forming part of the Granitsa grouping has not changed lately. Aerial reconnaissance, scouting, combat, search and ambush operations, artillery and aviation strikes remain the main types of border guards' activity in their responsibility zones.
Enlarged border patrols have landed over 30,000 times outside the stationing areas of the Granitsa grouping this year. The figure includes 4,000 missions accomplished by scouting and combat parties. Besides, over 9,500 ambushes have been set. Border guards have found and seized several dozens of firearms and over 16,500 pieces of ammunition, also destroying two ammo caches, three guerrilla strong-points, 27 shelters and hiding places.
Servicemen of the Granitsa grouping have engaged the enemy four times and come under fire about 20 times in 2001. They have lost 12 men killed since the beginning of the anti-guerrilla operation in Chechnya.