STAVROPOL. Nov 11 (Interfax-AVN) - The command of the North Caucasus regional border guard department will meet their Azerbaijani and Georgian colleagues again in the near future.
"During those meetings, border guards of the three countries will discuss interaction and exchange of reconnaissance information in autumn and winter. Moreover, they are to finalize plans of a trilateral command post exercise," the department's press service chief Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Livantsov told Interfax-Military News Agency on Monday.
He said similar meetings that took place in Dagestan and North Ossetia over a month ago helped work out a constructive approach to implementing Russia's initiative on holding the joint exercise. "All this time officials of Russia, Azerbaijani and Georgian border guard agencies were working out and finalizing documents related to the exercise. Such an event has never happened in the contemporary history of three three countries," Livantsov said.
He stressed that a man with an alien passport was detained in the Yarag-Kazmalyar checkpoint on the Russian-Azerbaijani border on Sunday. The detainee claims to be a Russian citizen. Investigators are to find out why he used alien documents.
"Border guards in the Krasnodar airport have 48 hours to identify and clear out reasons why a 38-year-old Russian woman decided to use an alien passport to fly to the Turkish city of Trabzon," Livantsov noted.
He said that in spring and summer border guards of the department allowed over 2.5 million people and over 289,000 vehicles to cross the border. At the same time, some 30 suspected guerillas were detained and over 70 pieces of firearms and cold arms, over 16,000 various cartridges and some 175kg of explosives seized. Together with officers of the Russian State Customs Committee, border guards seized over RUB1.44m (USD45,446) worth of cargo from smugglers.
"The situation in the department's area of responsibility did not face any changes on Sunday. No attacks on border guard posts or border violations were registered. Due to the improvement of weather conditions, border guards protecting Chechen and adjacent sections of the border used aircraft to scale up scouting and combat operations. The main aim is to obtain objective data on the level of snow on passes of the North Caucasus Range, find and eliminate rebel bases and storehouses and set ambushes on possible guerillas routes near the border," Livantsov added.