A bill was submitted to the State Duma, according to which the Russian Guard will have heavy weapons and tanks. Information about this is published on the website of the lower house of parliament.
The bill involves amendments to the federal law «On the National Guard Troops of the Russian Federation» and, as the explanatory note says, «is aimed at clarifying the terminology.» According to the amendments, the law proposes to replace the term «weapons» with «weapons», and the concept of «military equipment» with «military equipment».
According to the definition mentioned in the draft law, the phrase “military equipment” means “various technical means that troops (forces) are equipped with for combat and daily activities (combat equipment, technical means of command and control of troops (forces), technical means of combat , technical and logistic support, etc.)”. Thus, they write on the website of the State Duma, heavy weapons will become available to the National Guard.
The authors of the bill are Alexander Khinshtein, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Andrey Kartapolov, Head of the State Duma Committee on Defense, and Vasily Piskarev, Head of the Security Committee. In their opinion, the amendments to the legislation are due to the tasks of the National Guard, among which are “participation in the fight against terrorism and extremism, participation in ensuring the state of emergency, martial law, the legal regime of the counter-terrorist operation, participation in the territorial defense of the Russian Federation.”
On June 27, shortly after the Wagner and Yevgeny Prigozhin rebellion, the head of the Russian Guard, Viktor Zolotov, said that the department would have heavy weapons and tanks. “This issue is now very acute. We raise the issue that during the Chechen campaign we had tanks, and now <…> we don't have tanks. We will introduce this into the troops, ”Zolotov said then. He also added that the issue of supplying heavy weapons to the National Guard was discussed with Vladimir Putin.