Russia, the ‘mole’: “The risk of a coup services against Putin increases”

The risk of Vladimir Putin being overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the FSB, Moscow’s internal secret service, is increasing every day. This is what the Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin maintains, who speaks of widespread chaos and discontent within the agency due to the stalemate in the advance into Ukraine, while the position of the Russian president becomes increasingly unstable. Speaking to the Times when a month has passed since the invasion began, Osechkin – who lives in exile in Paris, from where he conducts his work with the site Gulagu.ru denouncing abuses in Russian prisons – explains: “For twenty years Putin has created stability in Russia. FSB officers, policemen, magistrates, people inside the system, have been able to lead a good life. ” But now, he reveals, citing an internal intelligence source, he is mounting anger at Putin. Firstly, because the Kremlin leader blames the FSB for the failure of the blitzkrieg in Ukraine and then because frustration is growing at the weight of increasingly oppressive sanctions. That prevent the top intelligence from going to their vacation homes or “taking the children to Disneyland Paris”. Accustomed to a different and better life, Osechkin observes, FSB agents “don’t want to go back to the Soviet Union”. of the security services “, claims the dissident, citing his internal source at the FSB, who would work in a small analysis department. On March 4, so only eight days after the invasion began, Osechkin spoke of the war of Putin as a “total failure”, comparable to the defeat of Nazi Germany. In recent days, a similar scenario had been aired by the Kiev intelligence, according to which the Russian elite are considering the possibility of removing Putin, through “poisoning , accident or illness “. In his place, as his successor, Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the FSB “recently disgraced by the Russian president” officially for “fatal miscalculations in the war against Ukraine”, reported intelligence would be identified. of Kiev.