OMON


OMON is a system of special police units of the Police of Russia within the National Guard of Russia, and previously Soviet and Russian Ministries of Internal Affairs. It was created as the special forces of the Soviet Militsiya in 1988, and then played major roles in several armed conflicts during and following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
OMON is much larger and better known than SOBR, another special police branch of the National Guard of Russia. In modern context, the OMON are used more like riot police, or as a gendarmerie-like paramilitary force. OMON units also exist in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and other post-Soviet states. However, some post-Soviet units have changed names and acronyms. OMON officers are commonly known as the omonovtsy.
On 5 April 2016, OMON became part of the newly established National Guard of Russia, ending its years as part of the Ministry of the Interior.p. 20

History

OMON originated in 1979, when the first Soviet police tactical unit was founded in preparation for the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to ensure that there were no terrorist incidents like the Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics. Subsequently, the unit was to be utilized in emergencies such as high-risk arrests, hostage crises and acts of terror.
inspecting Bryansk OMON in 2011
The current OMON system is the successor of that group and was founded on 3 October 1988 in Moscow and was called the Militsiya Squad of Special Assignment. Special police detachments were often manned by former soldiers of the Soviet Army and veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War. OMON units were used as riot police to control and stop demonstrations and hooliganism, as well as to respond to emergency situations involving violent crime. The units later took on a wider range of police duties, including cordon and street patrol actions, and even paramilitary and military-style operations.
Following Russia's 2011 police reform, Russian OMON units were to be renamed Distinctive Purpose Teams, while OMSN would become Special Purpose Teams. It was announced that Special Purpose Centers for Rapid Deployment forces would also be created in Russian regions, to include regional OMON and OMSN units. In essence, all police spetsnaz units were brought together under the joint command of the Interior Ministry — the Center for Operational Spetsnaz and Aviation Forces of MVD. In January 2012, Russia's OMON was renamed from Otryad Militsii Osobogo Naznacheniya, to Otryad Mobilniy Osobogo Naznacheniya, keeping the acronym.

Soviet OMON activities

The force was active in the First Chechen War of 1994–1996 in which OMON was often used in various security and light infantry roles, notably for the notorious "cleansing" operations. Prior to the war, there was also an OMON formation belonging to the Interior Ministry of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Chechnya's separatist government. The independent Chechnya had an OMON battalion prior to the war, but it was not battle trained, and did not play any significant role as an organized force before disintegrating. During the armed conflict, almost every Russian city would be regularly sending militsiya groups, often OMON members, for tours of usually three or four months. The pro-Moscow administration of the Chechen Republic also formed its own OMON detachments. In February 1996, a group of thirty-seven Russian OMON officers from Novosibirsk surrendered to Chechen militants of Salman Raduyev and Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov during the Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisis; Seventeen prisoners were later swapped for Chechen fighters captured by the Russian side in the same incident. In August 1996, group of about thirty ethnic Chechen members of Russian OMON answering to pro-Moscow commander Said-Magomed Kakiyev were reportedly captured and executed in Grozny by the separatist militias of Doku Umarov and Ruslan Gelayev during the battle for the city.
OMON took part in the Second Chechen War as well. OMON forces sustained severe losses in the conflict, including from the March 2000 ambush which killed scores of servicemen from Berezniki and Perm, the July 2000 suicide bombing which killed at least twenty-five Russians at Argun base of OMON from Chelyabinsk, and the April 2002 mine attack which left twenty-one Chechen OMON troops dead in central Grozny. Control and discipline continued to be questionable in Chechnya, where the OMON members were known to have engaged in, or fallen victim to, several deadly incidents of friendly fire and fratricide. In perhaps the bloodiest of such incidents, at least twenty-four were killed when OMON from Podolsk attacked a column of OMON from Sergiyev Posad in Grozny on 2 March 2000. Among other incidents, several Chechen OMON servicemen were abducted and executed in Grozny by Russian military servicemen in November 2000, members of Chechen OMON engaged in a shootout with the Ingush police on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia resulting in eight fatalities in September 2006, and Ramzan Kadyrov-controlled local OMON clashed with a group of rival Chechens belonging to the Kakiyev's Spetsnaz GRU military unit in Grozny, resulting in at least five being killed in 2007.
OMON was often accused of severe human rights abuses during the course of the conflict, including abducting, torturing, raping and killing civilians. By 2000, the bulk of such crimes, as recorded by international organisations in Chechnya, appeared to have been committed either by or with the participation of OMON. Moscow region OMON took part in the April 1995 rampage in the village of Samashki, where up to 300 civilians were reportedly killed during a large-scale brutal cleansing operation by federal MVD forces. In December 1999, a group of unidentified OMON members manning a roadblock checkpoint shot dead around forty refugees fleeing the siege of Grozny. OMON from Saint Petersburg are believed to have been behind the February 2000 Novye Aldi massacre in which at least sixty civilians were robbed and then killed by Russian forces entering Grozny after the fall of the city; one officer, Sergei Babin, was to be prosecuted in relation to the case in 2005 but he vanished. In April 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found Russia guilty of the forced disappearance of Shakhid Baysayev, a Chechen man who had gone missing after being detained in a March 2000 security sweep by Russian OMON in Grozny. In 2007, Khanty–Mansi Autonomous Okrug OMON officer Sergei Lapin was sentenced for the kidnapping and torture of a Chechen man in Grozny in 2001, with the Grozny court criticising the conduct of the OMON serving in Chechnya in broader terms. In an event related to the conflict in Chechnya, several OMON officers were also accused of starting the May 2007 wave of ethnic violence in Stavropol by assisting in the racially motivated murder of a local Chechen man.

Russian OMON

In Russia, there is an OMON unit in every oblast, as well as in many major cities; since 2016 these OMON units report directly to the National Guard Forces Command as part of its regional district commands, while these are expected to be deployed in support of the police forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Information from different sources suggested that there were between 10,500 and 15,000 OMON members stationed at population centers and transportation hubs around the country during the 1990s. This number officially rose to about 20,000 nationwide by 2007; the biggest OMON unit in Russia, Moscow OMON, numbers over 2,000 members. Most OMON officers retire at the age of approximately forty-five. They were also sometimes not paid for their service. In 2001, for example, some fifty OMON members from Moscow filed a lawsuit claiming they had not been paid for one month of combat operations in Chechnya. Due to the use of OMON members in high risk situations, especially in Chechnya and elsewhere in the North Caucasus, the group often loses members in combat.

Membership and training

Members of OMON are required to achieve a high level of fitness and expertise in small arms and hand-to-hand combat. Males between the ages of twenty-two and thirty who have completed their two-year military service can apply to join OMON. The application includes medical and psychological tests, and tests of speed and fitness. The initial training lasts for four months. The applicants are extensively trained in the use of different weaponry and close combat, and are also trained to follow orders at any cost. Special emphasis is put on urban combat and the entering and clearing of buildings. The training also includes legal training. The application procedure closes with a final test, where the applicant has to fight three to five trained members of OMON by hand wearing boxing gloves. Fewer than one in five applicants pass and are selected to join.

Equipment

OMON groups use a wide range of firearms, including but not limited to: AK-74 assault rifle, AKS-74U carbine assault rifle, 9A-91 compact assault rifle, and PP-19 Bizon submachine gun while the Makarov pistol, Stechkin automatic pistol and the MP-443 Grach are assigned as sidearms. OMON units may use other weaponry, typically used by Russian light infantry during special operations and in war zones, such as: the PK machine gun, the GP-25 underbarrel grenade launcher for assault rifle or the GM-94 pump-action grenade launcher, RPG series rocket-proppelled grenade launchers, and the Dragunov and Vintorez sniper rifles. They are sometimes called "OMON soldiers".
"Lavina-Uragan" riot control vehicle.
As riot police, OMON often uses special equipment termed riot gear to help protect themselves and attack others. Riot gear typically includes personal armor, batons, and riot helmets. OMON also deploys specialized less-than-lethal weapons, such as water cannon, pepper spray, tear gas, Sponge grenades, rifles that fire rubber bullets, bean bag rounds, stun grenades, and Long Range Acoustic Devices.

Transport

OMON vehicles include specially-equipped vans, buses and trucks of various types, as well as a limited number of armored personnel carriers such as GAZ Tigr, BTR-60, BTR-70 and BTR-80.

File:DayTechnologies2017p1-71.jpg|Moscow OMON with BTR-80M assault a building with suspects during Interpolitex-2017 exhibition.
Image:Tambov OMON in Nizhny Novogord.jpg|Green Kamysh wearing Tambov OMON units in Nizhny Novgorod with a "truck bus" on a ZIL-130.
File:Ural-4320_Police_Vehicle_in_SPB.jpg|Moscow OMON Ural-4320 truckbus.
File:Moscow_OMON_SPM-1_vehicle_during_antiriot_training.jpg|Moscow OMON SPM-1 vehicle during anti-riot training.

Uniforms

OMON's headgear remains their signature black beret, which they share with the Naval Infantry.
The group's members usually tend to wear an all-black, a blue or gray Tigerstripe camouflage police uniforms, but a not uncommon sight has been a variety of Russian Army and Russian Internal Troops uniforms, often with balaclava masks and/or helmets.

Other former Soviet Union OMONs