National Guards Receive New Commander. Why the President Picked a Third Rate General

The new National Guard Commander is 47 years old. His military carrier extends from the Deputy Commander of a tank company to the Deputy Commander of an army corps. And now, the post of the National Guard Commander! Leonid Kuchma has already developed a kind of tradition in appointing force structures officers: top positions are granted not to men from the entourage of the former chiefs, but to persons from the second, as it were, or even third rank. This was the case with Defense Minister Oleksandr Kuzmuk and Chief of General Staff Oleksandr Zatynaiko, who was transferred to this new chair as the chief of army corps, and, therefore, leapt over the post of the chief of military district.

Such appointments seem to assure full loyalty of new-fledged commanders who are lucky to have been appointed. And, in case the disregarded generals show their negative attitude to their new boss, he will be forced to seek support from the Commander-in-Chief.

The main task General Chapovsky will have to cope with in his new capacity is to convince Parliament, when it discusses amendments to the law on National Guard of Ukraine, that the National Guard is indispensable. The problem is that numerous functions assigned to the Guards are mostly duplicating the tasks performed by other units. The only specific task of NGU is to protect the Constitutional order in case of an attempt to break it using unconstitutional means. This may be interpreted that the Guards will be used to suppress acts of mass disobedience. And the Guards have more than enough possibilities to do that. The NGU units are deployed in 14 oblast centers.

At a press conference Leonid Kuchma said it was worthwhile to have a "good look both at the National Guards and Internal Troops so as to stop duplicating their activities". It is a rather demonstrative fact that following that statement, Internal Troops, not the National Guards, began to express their concern. Thus it may be inferred, that if new Parliament is critical about the preservation of the NGU, the President will intercede. He has at least one reason: it is easier to control and maintain a military structure with 30,000 men than Armed Forces totaling 350,000.