NAST - Russia’s National Association Of Telokraniteli (Bodyguards) - was founded in 1995. Basically that’s when law and order in Russia was privatised under capitalism. Today NAST is the minder for an industry which employs over a million people.

I’ve been wondering if I should get a bodyguard while wandering around Russia. It is a dangerous place. For a start, you can get laid every ten yards.

More to the point, everyone else seems to have a bodyguard. It feels as inept as not having a mobile phone. And imagine how sending in an advance, sweep and surveillance team could really liven up an outing to Russkoe Bistro. Even more exciting is that you can hire Russian girls as armed escorts too.

How did Russians manage before the Bodyguard Industry? I suppose they could all take care of themselves. After all, Basic Military Training was taught to boys and girls in Soviet schools as a compulsory subject. Vera’s Log recalls being lectured that ‘no man would sleep with a girl who couldn’t disassemble a Kalashnikov in 53 seconds’.

Sadly this training is no longer widely available. You’ll have to attend an elite boarding school in Moscow, like these two girls below. Or sign up for a seminar at one of Moscow’s many Bodyguard Academies.

Victoria Korchagina is head of NAST’s North Western Division. She teaches girls how to wield a hairpin in anger or anything that comes to hand. But don’t expect to strip down any Kalashnikovs. Victoria reckons that shooting people is old-fashioned and today’s killers prefer strong and fast decomposing poisons. (Yet another reason, just by the way, why I can’t believe that Polonium 210 was ever intended as a murder weapon in the Litivinenko affair.)

Once you’ve trained as a bodyguard, you can enter the glitzy annual Infame Academy awards, the Russian Oscars for Bodyguards, ZUBR. (Za ukrepleniye bezopasnosti Rossii.) These were the brainwave of NAST chief Dmitry Fonaryev. Along with awards for blasting kneecaps, there are also categories for odd things like ‘Intelligence Defense’. The security industry is full of strange euphemisms.

If you want to know what it takes to become a bodyguard, there are plenty of online application forms at various company websites. Can you answer ‘yes’ to all these questions?

Can you handle a weapon?
Do you have a belt in Martial Arts?
Can you maintain your own vehicle?
Would you lie?
Would you lie to protect your client?
Can you keep your thoughts to yourself?

Then, just one other thing, you’ll need to be in good health. At least, when you start.