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“The West got it so right and Russia got it so wrong when it came to pre-war intelligence in Ukraine. According to a Russian intelligence expert, President Vladimir Putin is now looking for the spy who attacked him. “We’re hearing some new rumors and more information about an apparent hunt for a traitor within the FSB, the Russian Federal Security Service, because a lot of people in Moscow right now are wondering why the US intelligence service used to be so, so specific about the invasion,” he said Andrei soldatov.
Soldierov believes the United States and NATO didn’t just learn the details of Russian planning from electronic wiretaps because he says Russia has a Byzantine system and the way decisions are made is never clear. So Putin would assume someone sang. And it would be convenient to pin one’s military losses on that someone.
Ukrainian independent journalist Volodymyr Solohub believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin could attack the press at any moment. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
“It’s a very Russian way of working on your problems as if something went really, really wrong. It’s always good to blame a traitor, because in that case you’re fine. You have done nothing wrong. It’s all about a traitor.” Soldierov, who studied and wrote about the FSB for many years, said that when the top is looking for a mole, they ruthlessly dig up the whole yard to maximize the information overload. According to the Bellingcat investigative group, 150 members of the FSB have been either purged or arrested in recent weeks.
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Soldierov says he’s trying to confirm the information, but it actually fits a pattern. What Soldierov believes is that Sergei Beseda, the head of the FSB’s Fifth Service tasked with keeping the ex-Soviet republics sweet, has transitioned from house arrest to incarceration behind the bars of the notorious Lefortovo prison, where killings and brutal interrogations took place at the hands of the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s secret police. Indeed, if Lefortovo is where Beseda is, it sends a message to anyone who even thinks of stepping out of line.
But Soldierov says there’s a practical reason to keep him there, too. “The Russian prison system is very corrupt. So once inside, you can find a way to communicate with the outside world. You can get your iPhone and you can make calls. So everything, almost everything is possible, but not in Lefortovo. In Lefortovo, people may be kept completely incommunicado. And as far as I know, he’s basically being held there under an assumed name and there will be no way for him to communicate with the outside world. Soldierov says officially the charges against Beseda appear to be embezzlement, but he thinks that might suit those in power better than announcing an all-out hunt for a defector.
Svyatogorsk Lavra in Donetsk region after it was attacked (State Service for Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine)
Soldierov tells Fox News that he gets a fuss from his sources that many in the security services and even the military blame not only the Fifth Shift for the failure in this war, but also Vladimir Putin himself phase of the invasion of Ukraine, everyone was happy with how it went… happy with Putin and on the same side,” he says.
Many inside also supported the recent intervention, but he adds: “You specifically blame Putin and the Fifth Service for acting in a way that has caused so much trouble, damage and casualties.” Does that mean, I ask that they are ready to take a stand against Putin? “Right now they are building that distance between them and him. But that doesn’t mean they’re ready to do anything about him because there are so many things against it. The lack of tradition. The KGB was never really good at planning and conspiring. The only time they tried it, in 1991, ended in disaster because the middle officers didn’t support the KGB’s leadership to get rid of Gorbachev. It’s even worse for the army,” saysSoltodov.
Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall before a meeting of the Victory Organizing Committee at the Kremlin in Moscow March 17, 2015. The meeting will focus on preparations for the celebration of the 70th anniversary of Victory in World War II. (Sergei Ilnitsky/AFP via Getty Images)
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Soldierov says what he finds even more remarkable, perhaps even ominous, about this particular moment from a security standpoint is that he says Putin actually turned on his own foot soldiers.
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“The most surprising thing is that Putin decided to attack his own people. He trusted these people for 20 years. Even before the war, he began attacking and humiliating the head of his foreign intelligence agency. Two weeks later he attacked the FSB. Three weeks later he attacked the National Guard. This is something completely unprecedented.”