He was part of Vladimir Putin’s entourage for more than ten years and accompanied him on all his travels. Gleb Karakulov, a former officer in the Federal Protection Service (FGS), the Kremlin’s close guard, has agreed to tell his story to a Russian investigative outlet. Paranoid, cut off from the world… this Russian in exile depicts a leader under siege and a Russian society more indoctrinated than ever.
Before broadcasting his testimony, the Dossier Center, a Russian investigative outlet based in London and funded by Russian oligarch and opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, conducted several checks to ensure the authenticity of Karakulov’s testimony. The site was thus able to see his FGS ID and the search warrant from the Russian Interior Ministry after his escape.
Gleb Karakulov worked in the Communications Department of the President of the FGS until last October. He was responsible for establishing secure communication networks for the Russian President and Prime Minister whenever they travelled. On October 15, 2022, when the war in Ukraine had begun more than six months ago, he took advantage of a business trip to Astana, Kazakhstan to let his colleagues down and boarded a plane bound for Istanbul, Turkey.
In his story, which lasted more than an hour, Karakulov cleared up the rumors about a Putin suffering from an incurable disease. “He’s probably in better health than a lot of people his age,” notes the ex-FGS captain, who asserts that in 13 years of service by the Russian head of state, only one or two trips by the Russian head of state have been postponed because of health problems. The officer in exile, on the other hand, depicts a Kremlin master who is constantly on the alert, even completely paranoid, constantly surrounded by a key security service. Karakulov describes him as “morbidly terrified at the thought of someone taking their own life,” and says, for example, that he was tasked with securing a bunker’s communications network during a trip to Kazakhstan because of Putin’s fear of bombs. A special FGS service is even responsible for testing the President’s food.
In 2021 Vladimir Putin would have given up the idea of flying and would only travel by train. A convoy in the grey-red colors of Russian national trains is to remain incognito. “Whenever he travels, he always takes a phone box with him. A cube about 2.5 m high that houses a workstation and a secure phone,” says Karakulov.
For Lukas Aubin, head of research at IRIS, the fears of the Russian President are justified. “Russia is the country of three revolutions (1905, 1917 and 1991) and the nature of Putin’s regime is fragile. It is not a dynasty, it has no successors, which implies many pretenders, ”recalls the author of “Geopolitics of Russia”. Last Sunday’s attack on pro-Russian blogger Maxime Fomin is also evidence that there is an opposition in Russia capable of using violence against the Kremlin and its sympathizers.
“He lives in an information vacuum”
According to Karakulov, Vladimir Putin’s psychosis has intensified since the pandemic. Since 2021, senior dignitaries requesting a private meeting with their leader must observe a two-week quarantine. And a pity when everyone around him is vaccinated and forced to test himself several times a day. The Covid has therefore largely changed the Russian President’s way of life, according to the ex-officer, who speaks of “two different Putins” before and after the pandemic. Those who never use the internet or mobile phones only get information from those around them or from the secret services.
“He lives in an information vacuum,” is how the ex-captain put it. “A reasonable person in the 21st century, who looks objectively at everything that is happening in the world (…) would not have allowed a war in Ukraine,” believes the latter. And to add: “I consider him a war criminal”.
In this Fluss interview, the Russian-in-exile also conjures up his compatriots and former colleagues, whom he portrays as being completely under the influence of Kremlin propaganda, including his own mother, with whom he has had no contact since his desertion. After all, he feels grateful for his job, without which he too would probably have been a “Z supporter” like everyone who believes in Russian television.
Testimonies like Gleb Karakulov’s are extremely rarely the only sources of information from Russia today, where severe repression prevents journalists from doing their jobs properly. Last week, Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist and Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was arrested on suspicion of espionage, becoming the first Western reporter to be arrested in Ukraine since the beginning of the war.