More than 150 officers have been purged form the ranks of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), as President Vladimir Putin is placing blame on his intelligence agencies for the setbacks experienced during the invasion of Ukraine.
This assessment was communicated to the London-based Times
newspaper by British intelligence sources, who added that many of those
purged have been dismissed from the service, while others remain under
house arrest. A few —among them senior FSB officials— are in prison. The
FSB is tasked with domestic security and counterintelligence
operations, which were carried out by the KGB during the Cold War.
According to The Times,
the purge has mostly targeted officers in the FSB’s Service for
Operational Information and International Communications, which is
informally known as the Fifth Service of the FSB. As intelNews has previously explained,
the FSB’s Fifth Service was established in 1992 in order to fill the
vacuum created by a host of no-spy agreements between Moscow and the
governments of former Soviet Republics. These agreements prevent
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) from spying inside the
territories of former Soviet states.
By 1995, the Fifth Service had become
known as the “foreign spy wing” of the FSB. It grew in size drastically
after 1999, and some claim it “graduated into [Russian President
Vladimir] Putin’s imperial gendarme”. Today, the Fifth Service is
reportedly in charge of Kremlin’s “kill list” of Ukrainian senior
officials and other dissidents who live in Ukraine. Until recently, the
Fifth Service was led by Sergei Beseda and Anatoly Bolyukh (or Bolukh).
However, The Times claims that
both officials have been dismissed from their posts in recent weeks.
Initially, the Russian government claimed that Beseda had embezzled
funds, and placed him under house arrest. He has since been transferred
to a prison, according to the paper, and has now been formally charged
with misinforming the Kremlin about the conditions on the ground in
Ukraine. Bolyukh has been dismissed from his post but is reportedly not
in prison. His current whereabouts remain unclear.
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