Russian intelligence and defense agencies have begun to squabble over the disastrous invasion of Ukraine, US officials have said.
A blame game has begun between the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian Ministry of Defense, the two government departments responsible for plotting the invasion of Ukraine.
US officials added that the agencies may have told Putin what he wanted to hear because of his deep-seated beliefs about Ukraine.
This comes after Vladimir Putin placed the head of the FSB foreign policy service and his deputy under house arrest, blaming them for intelligence failures that caused his army to suffer a series of embarrassing defeats in Ukraine.
A woman walks in front of the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in downtown Moscow.
Jeffrey Edmonds, a former CIA and National Security Council official, told The Wall Street Journal: “It’s hard to imagine any high-ranking intelligence official talking to Putin and not telling Putin what he wants to hear, especially if that belief is deeply as well as Putin’s beliefs about Ukraine.”
“When it comes to this guy, it’s also clear that the ‘blame and pay’ culture is clearly still in place,” added Geoffrey, a regional specialist.
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, U.S. Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia 2015-2018, added that Putin is looking for people to “scapegoat and blame” and believes that “he is now in much more dangerous position.”
The head of the FSB’s foreign policy service, Sergei Orestovich Beseda (pictured), was reportedly placed under house arrest after the intelligence agency claimed responsibility for the course of the war.
Putin is reportedly accusing his intelligence services of misleading him about the extent of Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian attack.
Last week Andrey Soldatov, a respected writer on Russian intelligence agencies, said FSB sources told him that Sergei Beseda, 68, the head of the FSB’s foreign affairs agency, had been arrested on Putin’s orders.
Also arrested was Anatoly Bolyukh, Besed’s deputy, according to Soldatov, who said Putin was “really unhappy” with the agency he ran before he became president.
Putin is said to blame the agency for having been assured by intelligence before the invasion that Russian forces would face only token resistance from the Ukrainian military and that the Ukrainians themselves were keen to get rid of their leaders.
Among the reasons for the repressions is the theft of funds allocated for subversive and undercover work in Ukraine, as well as deliberately false information about the political situation in Ukraine.
Anatoly Bolyukh, deputy head of the 5th FSB service, head of the operational information department, was also detained.
Andrey Soldatov is a respected author on the Russian intelligence services.
The FSB security service allegedly gave him intelligence indicating that Ukraine is weak, riddled with neo-Nazi groups and will easily surrender if attacked.
In fact, the Russian armed forces faced fierce resistance from Ukrainian soldiers who fought them to the bone, inflicting heavy casualties and forcing Putin’s command to resort to a vicious siege war, which has so far produced little results.
Soldatov previously told The Times that most FSB agents enter the service as employees on the basis that their parents or grandparents are agents and are excluded from mainstream schools to be taught at home.
This is unlike Western security services, which tend to recruit from elite universities or colleges to ensure they get the cream of the crop.
Alternatively, he said, the organization did collect good intelligence but was simply too afraid to tell Putin the truth, instead forging its reports to appease him.
A charred Russian tank and captured tanks amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the Sumy region, Ukraine, March 7.