According to the news reports, Putin is looking for the culprits, among others, at the 5th service of the FSB, the powerful part of the security service responsible for espionage in Ukraine. The Russian-language news site meduza, blocked in Russia, reported last week that Sergei Beseda, the longtime commander of the 5th Service, has been interrogated and placed under house arrest. Two media outlets specializing in Putin’s security services have confirmed that Beseda has been questioned.
On Thursday, Russian media also reported the resignation and arrest of Roman Gavrilov, the deputy commander of the National Guard, a security service under Putin who has suffered heavy casualties in Ukraine. There are also doubts about the position of Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the foreign intelligence service SVR, after he was yelled at by Putin on state television last month.
The reports about the 5th service in particular raise questions about Putin’s information position. The service has always had a special status under Putin. In the late 1990s, then FSB director Putin gave the 5th service powers to spy in neighboring countries, even though the FSB is on paper an internal security service and foreign operations belong to the military GRU and the SVR. Important area of activity of the 5th service: Ukraine.
After three weeks of war, it is clear that the Russian war in that country is not going as well as the Kremlin had expected. Viktor Zolotov, the head of the Russian National Guard, admitted this week that the invasion is “slowing down than we want”. The great willingness among the Ukrainian population to stop the Russian army seems underestimated by the Kremlin.
Information withheld
“It seems that Vladimir Putin has finally found out that there is something wrong with his intelligence information,” journalist Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Putin’s services, said in a statement. a YouTube interview with the team of the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Soldatov suspects Putin’s subordinates deliberately withheld unwelcome information about Ukraine. “We all know that the FSB has people who know the character of the man in the Kremlin. They understand that he wants to see information that satisfies him. Now the illusionary reality collides with the real reality.’
That analysis is shared by intelligence experts. Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin oligarch in danger of losing his foreign real estate empire because of Putin’s war, also shared Soldatov’s interview on his Telegram channel.
The 5th service is also tasked with building pro-Russian networks in neighboring countries. But in Ukraine, television channels with Kremlin propaganda have been taken off the air by President Zelensky. Putin’s main political ally in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, was placed under house arrest by security forces in Kyiv last year. His pro-Russian opposition party lost much of its influence.
According to Soldatov, Putin had been promised by 5th service staff that Russian soldiers would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberators and that a Kremling-minded government could be quickly installed. Soldatov: ‘They have completely failed.’