The new border posts will be part of the country’s larger plan to upgrade infrastructure along the Northern Sea Route, Head of the Federal Security Service’s (FSB) Border Service Vladimir Pronichev told Izvestiya.
Some of the new border posts will be co-located with the ten emergency rescue centers that Russia plans to establish along the Northern Sea Route by 2015. The first one will open in Dudinka in August 2012.
Pronichev said the government’s program calls for 15 to 20 border guards to be stationed at each of the 20 new posts. The personnel will be educated at the Emergency Ministry’s training facilities and will be “universal specialists” with capability to contribute in search and rescue operations, but also to maintain power supply, fuel storages, water supply, communications systems etc. at the rescue centers.
Pronichev admitted that at first glance there seems to be no need for border posts in the remote northern regions of Russia, but during recent years there have been incidents when “foreign tourists” ventured into Russia’s northern waters without permission and unprepared for the conditions there. He also said that scientific expeditions from time to time carry out exploration without official permission.
