Award ceremony from the Chechnya war

[RedMaestro2]

I was trolling around youtube after reading about the war in Chechnya and came across this video:

YouTube - Chechnya. Battle for Alhan Yurt 1999 Part3

About two minutes in there is a small award ceremony. It lasts through most of the video and would probably be most interesting for anyone who can understand Russian (I can't, so I skipped a bit). There is a close up shot of the medal and document at one point. Anyone know what it is?



Alex

[deValcourt]

If I saw it correctly, and I think I did, it was the one at the top of the list on this Wikipedia page:
Awards of the Federal Border Service of the Russian Federation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I have one of these in my collection (if you want to see the reverse too, just let me know) and it is not anything like the Soviet Combat Cooperation medal. It was hard to tell from the poor quality video and my lack of knowledge of current uniform insignia, but these guys may have been part of a VV MVD unit that supported the regular Border Guards during the battle referred to in the video.

Note: When the officer is giving his speech before handing out the awards (about 3:06 minutes into the video), you can see a Soviet-era border obelisk in the background, which makes this all the more credible to me. Also, notice that the medals came in the same little plain cardboard boxes with that cheap, coarse tissue paper inside.

Neat bit of modern history and field awarding techniques.

Phillip

[CtahhR]

The Ministry of Defence issued the same medal (well same name ribbon and front just a different reverse). I have a few of these RF medals in the poor cardboard boxes and it's strange to think they were issued like that in the mid to late 90's. Mind you I did once get a package from Moscow in about 2000 that looked like it was at least 100 years out of place.