The Russian president is unhappy with the difficulties encountered in Ukraine. Responsible for the FSB’s external services division and his departed deputy, as reported by a Kremlin affairs expert.
Putin would have planned. And this is making the Russian president furious. So much so that, according to information released by a specialist in Russian military affairs and cited by various international media, Putin had ordered to place under house arrest two senior leaders of the FSB – the Russian intelligence services, heirs of the extinct KGB – allegedly responsible for having transmitted to him a false scenario of ease in taking Kyiv.
According to reports released by Kremlin affairs expert Andrei Soldatov, Putin blamed several people for the slow advance of Russian troops and at least two high-ranking secret service officers were under house arrest, and several generals were allegedly sacked.
The agents under house arrest will be Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB’s external services division, and his deputy, Anatolij Bolyukh. According to Corriere Dela Sera, at the beginning of the invasion, on February 24, Beseda and Bolyukh were tasked, according to reports denied by the Kremlin, of sending a special team to assassinate Ukrainian President Zelensky.
The FSB’s external servicemen reportedly turned to a few hundred Chechen guerrillas, very loyal to President Kadyrov. The Chechens, however, would all have been wiped out by Ukrainian counterintelligence. This failure, together with erroneous reports on the Ukrainian internal situation, would have led Putin to remove Beseda and Bolyukh. According to information from Andrei Soldatov to the British newspaper The Times, the Russian president will be quite unhappy with the agency that he himself led before becoming president.
Soldatov told the paper that the scenario may have been that the FSB had real knowledge of the situation in Ukraine, but created a different scenario to convey to Putin. “The problem is that it’s often riskyto tell Putin things he doesn’t want to hear.”
This information fits into others advanced by Ukrainian intelligence reports. According to Oleksiy Danilov, head of the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, quoted by “Ukrayinska Pravda” and other Ukrainian media, Putin has already fired eight high-ranking military officers.
This information has not received any comment from Moscow so far. This Friday (11), Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu again said that the “military operation” in Ukraine is proceeding as planned.
However, Putin has given the green light to sending “volunteer” fighters to Ukraine, opening the operation to fighters elsewhere, from Syria to Belarus. In the Middle East alone, more than 16,000 people will have volunteered to fight for the “liberation movement” of the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Source: with agencies