- Drew Berquist - https://www.drewberquist.com -

Putin Purges His Own Spies, Many Likely Dead Already

Putin is going further and further Stalinist. Now, he’s mimicking Uncle Joe by getting rid of his spooks so he can scapegoat them over the botched Ukraine invasion.

FNC: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming his old colleagues at the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the intelligence agency successor to the KGB – for the quagmire.

Putin reportedly purged more than 100 agents from the FSB, and his government sent the head of the department responsible for Ukraine to prison. About 150 FSB officers have been dismissed, The Times of London reported Monday. The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service, a division that Putin – then director of the FSB – set up in 1998 in order to carry out operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union, aiming to keep those countries in Russia’s orbit.

Authorities placed Sergei Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest last month. He has since been moved to the FSB-run Lefortovo prison in Moscow, The Times reported. The NKVD, the KGB’s predecessor, used the prison for interrogation and torture during Stalin’s 1930s Great Purge.”

Andrei Soldatov, an expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told The Times. “I was surprised by this. Putin could have very easily just fired him or sent him off to some regional job in Siberia. Lefortovo is not a nice place and sending him there is a signal as to how seriously Putin takes this stuff.”

Soldatov said the Fifth Service represents “the most sensitive department of the FSB department, which is in charge of espionage in Ukraine. And now it looks like Vladimir Putin finally understood that the intelligence he was given before the invasion was not extremely accurate. And he has started looking around trying to find someone to blame.” In related news, Democrat Rep. Richie Torres of NY wants the Russians out of their Bronx spy nest.

“We have been appalled and alarmed by Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. We have been appalled by his war crimes against the Ukrainian people, and it is in that context that I have formally requested that the FBI open an investigation into reports of espionage at the Russian diplomatic compound,” Torres told reporters about the white high-rise tower located at 355 West 255th Street, in the Bronx borough.