General Organization
Despite being subordinated to a civilian police authority, Internal Troops are a military force with centralized system of ranks, command and service. The Chief Commander and Staff of the troops report only to Ministry of Internal Affairs, maintaining their separate chain of command. VV units in Soviet Union were predominantly formed up of conscripts drafted by the same system as for the Soviet Army. Modern Troops in Russia and Ukraine are experiencing a slow transition to the contract personnel system. VV officers are trained in both own special academies and Army's military academies.
The main kinds of Internal Troops are field units, prison security units, various facility-guarding units and special forces like Rus. Since the 1980s, the several special forces units that developed within the VV, were created to deal with terrorism and hostage crises.
Fields units are essentially light motorized infantry, similar to respective regular army units by their organization and weapons.
Soviet prison security units (Russian: конвойные войска, konvoinyie voyska; criminal slang: vertuhai) were originally consisting of the units that guard the perimeters of the prisons, and the prisoner transport teams (actually konvoi, literally "convoy"). In post-Soviet countries, some or all of the prison-related tasks were transferred to other agencies.
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