The MVD.
(Russian: Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del) Ministry of Internal Affairs
Probably one of the most important formations in Twilight 2000 and one that is totally neglected. The MVD is a parallel military organisation to the SSV and is a defining feature of Leninist Communist countries; it is a militarised umbrella organisation that includes not only internal security troops but firemen, paramedics and police. There is considered no distinction between these and other groups. In European terminology it is a Gendarmerie and it is the parallel to the Polish TKO. In US terms they have a separate identity and a Corp d' Esprit similar to the situation with the USMC in contrast to the US Army.
The reason MVD troops are so important to the game is that they act in concert with similar Warsaw Pact organisations to provide rear area security, ie; the area the players are in.
Unlike the Polish TKO the MVD was a behemoth that had over one and a half million men under arms. These troops aren't second rate warriors, they are specialists that not only secure rear areas from stragglers, provide disaster relief and wipe out special forces but they also act as a ready reserve to deal with penetrations of main force units as well as fight on the front lines. One of their specialties is urban warfare. To do so they are heavily armed but have an emphasis on fast movement and independent action.
For a TOE you can use standard USSR Motor Rifle Division for the Field Units (the ones the players will encounter) but generally with a smaller armour contingent. The MVD also do prisoner control, both civil and military, and so on being the police force. The MVD was essentially broken into three parts, the Police Force that stays in the USSR, the Logistics units and the Field Units. Note that the MVD rigorously maintains a separate chain of command to the SSV and this means that the MVD is not going to be drained off to fill up depleted army divisions. However they do fight in front line situations as well, having fought in all the conflicts of the USSR up to and including the 2nd Chechen War.
The MVD had unique uniforms with their own particular camouflage patterns and are often easily distinguished from main force SSV troops. MVD troops used a variety of specialist weapons such as the OTs-02 Kiparis SMG, OTs-14 Groza bullpup, OTs-20 Gnom revolver and many more. I can actually trawl up all their unique ironmongery if people are interested.
The MVD had several Spetsnaz groups of their own and these may well figure in the campaign, however most of these will have suffered massive attrition and others had a policing orientation similar to elite SWAT groups that would probably keep them in the USSR.
I have mentioned elsewhere the MVD “did not get on well with the KGB”. To give you an insight into this situation in the early 1980s some MVD officers and enlisted men hunted down and murdered a KGB officer in the Moscow Metro, as they were the police it’s unsurprising that no one is was never charged for this crime and the reason for why the man was killed is unknown to this day.
The MVD in the Twilight War.
While some of the MVD is going to be on the Oder Line holding back the “capitalist imperialists” they are also going to be behind the lines and controlling the population, providing what disaster relief they can and dealing with stragglers (ie: player characters). The USSR was quite sensitive to how their troops operated after the fiasco of the Prussian Campaign in the latter Second World War and preferred that their troops acted as back up to local internal troops, in this Poland this is the TKO. However it is likely that the TKO would have suffered massive casualties fighting for their homeland so it is equally likely that MVD units will instead have the local surviving TKO contingent attached and who are the primary interaction with the locals.
The MVD is going to secure the web of supply lines leading back to what is left of the USSR. As the strikes were quite limited there will a degree of industrial capacity, the USSR having a far more dispersed logistics network, and as this is a communist group of nations the military will be given the bulk of that capacity and the civilians will get what’s left. Note that while the situation is bad in the USSR a lot of cooperation can be gained over the civilian population by loudly supplying the troops and like everything in a communist country these operations have to have a political/ideological component. From these logistics centres the MVD will range out and try to exert control over the devastated areas. The players will encounter them holding checkpoints, involved in disaster relief operations, guarding logistics routes, maintaining communications relay outposts, engaged in bandit and partisan suppression and of course hunting down NATO stragglers.
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