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20261012 230000 UTC
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[00:00:36] A guard, a collective farmer, or a poisoner, the reform
[00:00:39] of the main security agency. The main actor
[00:00:43] in the so-called reform is the head of Rosneft,
[00:00:47] Igor Sechin. Alexandra Bortnikov is being retired. According
[00:00:51] to one version, Putin does not want
[00:00:53] a professional FSB officer, well, that is, a professional
[00:00:57] leader, to head this structure, because
[00:01:00] it will strengthen it even more. Russia is suffering defeat in Donbas and
[00:01:04] bombs Ukraine daily. There
[00:01:06] they have to, as some military correspondents say,
[00:01:10] retreat to pre-prepared positions, this
[00:01:13] is true. Is Putin ready to impose martial law?
[00:01:17] The fact that Belousov dreams of conscripting
[00:01:20] another several hundred thousand people into the army
[00:01:47] Let's start with almost secular news: the FSB
[00:01:51] decided to increase comfort for its leadership, the project was published
[00:01:55] on the portal of regulatory legal acts, writes the agency.
[00:01:58] According to the document, board members are allowed
[00:02:02] to fly first class, I leaned back completely,
[00:02:05] completely leaned back, lay down, and I still have this much left, even if you
[00:02:09] are 1.90 meters, probably, 2-3, you will be quite
[00:02:13] comfortable here, and not only for official matters, first
[00:02:16] class will be available even to vacationers, including family
[00:02:20] members, some colonels will get comfort class, all
[00:02:23] of this will of course be paid for by the state, that is, us
[00:02:26] taxpayers, the news perfectly confirms:
[00:02:30] The thesis: Chekists are indeed becoming the new
[00:02:33] nobility in Russia. Privileges exist, status also
[00:02:36] exists, but first class is just the tip of
[00:02:39] the iceberg. Much more interesting is what is happening
[00:02:43] inside the FSB itself. Lately, the word "reform" has been heard.
[00:02:47] Journalists and experts write about it. The FSB has long
[00:02:50] gone far beyond security.
[00:02:53] Today, the FSB controls the courts,
[00:02:56] controls investigations, controls the prosecutor's office.
[00:03:48] Roman Anin, the founder of Important Stories, also speaks about possible changes. It's not just about
[00:03:51] personnel changes, experts talk about a conflict
[00:03:55] within the system. The fact that these clans for
[00:03:58] 25 years that they have been in power
[00:04:02] have constantly fought with each other, these power clans, well, for example, we listed various special services
[00:04:06] forgot to mention such an important agency as
[00:04:09] Rosgvardiya, which is headed by Putin's former
[00:04:12] bodyguard, Viktor Zolotov, nicknamed "perforated" in
[00:04:15] the criminal world of St. Petersburg, he had such a nickname because, as
[00:04:18] one of the leaders of this criminal world admitted to me, he is an absolutely
[00:04:22] stupid person with an IQ of an Australopithecus, who at the same time
[00:04:25] is ready for any cruelty by order
[00:04:29] of the Tsar. So, for example, Zolotov fought with Patrushev all his life, they simply
[00:04:33] hate each other, and Sechin fought with Medvedev all his life, they also hate
[00:04:36] each other, when these clans are always fighting with each other, then when
[00:04:40] you have only one factor that balances these wars,
[00:04:44] it is actually the Tsar himself, when the Tsar begins to weaken, Patrushev inevitably
[00:04:48] thinks that if, say, Zolotov or someone from his
[00:04:52] clan, like Dyumin or Mironov or someone else, comes to power,
[00:04:55] then it's the end for Patrushev, exactly the same thing is thought by Dyumin or
[00:04:59] Mironov. Therefore, they inevitably start fighting with each other, because
[00:05:03] they are afraid that if one does not start acting, the other will start acting, that's why this
[00:05:06] construction, in my opinion, is very shaky, and here another
[00:05:10] paradox appears, the Kremlin... strengthened the FSB for decades,
[00:05:14] now it itself begins to fear the monster, says Gennady
[00:05:18] Gudkov and speaks about a possible change in leadership, and
[00:05:21] an unusual option is being discussed: a new
[00:05:24] director may come from outside, not a career Chekist and not a general,
[00:05:28] but a person with a civilian background, for the FSB this would be a serious
[00:05:31] signal, possibly only the beginning of a major restructuring.
[00:05:35] Putin is concerned about the sharp increase
[00:05:39] in the FSB's influence, already political influence.
[00:05:42] Not just that they are carving up
[00:05:46] some enterprises, robbing there, participating in corrupt
[00:05:49] schemes, he is concerned about the increased political
[00:05:52] influence of the FSB, right now, when the question
[00:05:56] of Bortnikov's retirement
[00:05:59] is being decided, all people in the near-Kremlin circles
[00:06:02] confirm, at least, they know it,
[00:06:06] one of the versions I heard
[00:06:09] from more competent people... of the version
[00:06:13] Putin does not want a professional
[00:06:16] FSB officer, well, that is a professional leader, a person
[00:06:20] who made a career there, to head this structure, because this
[00:06:24] will strengthen it even more, the people who today head
[00:06:27] the FSB, they participate in the arrangement of all the most influential
[00:06:31] clans in Russia, in these internal squabbles, in this
[00:06:34] struggle, and there is even such a thought, I
[00:06:38] have already heard it, that Putin is now looking for a candidate from outside, to
[00:06:42] put him at the head of the FSB, well, just
[00:06:45] as the Politburo once put Andropov at
[00:06:47] the head of the KGB, who was
[00:06:51] a Secretary of the Central Committee, and had no relation to special services. This
[00:06:54] way, the political influence of the KGB was reduced. After
[00:06:57] all, Andropov was a political figure, more
[00:07:01] connected with party bodies than
[00:07:05] with special services.
[00:07:08] Putin, I heard that he
[00:07:11] wants to repeat this experience. According to journalist
[00:07:14] Sergei Kanev of The Insider, changes in the FSB may
[00:07:18] begin after Alexander Bortnikov's anniversary. On November
[00:07:21] 15, the FSB director will turn 75, possibly
[00:07:24] along with a farewell to retirement. It is after this
[00:07:28] date that a personnel reshuffle of the agency may begin. Kanev considers
[00:07:32] Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft,
[00:07:35] one of the main players in the struggle for influence. As it
[00:07:38] seems to me, such a main actor
[00:07:41] in this so-called reform
[00:07:44] is the head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin,
[00:07:48] who is once again trying
[00:07:52] to put his people in key positions in
[00:07:55] the FSB. And his main protégé
[00:07:58] candidate is General Ivan Tkachev,
[00:08:01] nicknamed "the collective farmer". In his time, Ivan Tkachev
[00:08:05] headed the Sixth Service of the FSB's Internal Security Directorate, the so-called
[00:08:08] Sechin special forces,
[00:08:11] then Sechin moved him to
[00:08:14] the CA Department, the banking department of the FSB.
[00:08:17] Now Tkachev
[00:08:20] sits in the chair of the head
[00:08:24] of counterintelligence of the FSB,
[00:08:27] military counterintelligence of the FSB, that is, he controls the entire
[00:08:30] army, and I think
[00:08:33] he is trying to move
[00:08:35] Tkachev
[00:08:38] to the leadership of the FSB. There
[00:08:40] is also another influential figure -
[00:08:44] Alexei Sidov. He heads the Second Service
[00:08:47] of the FSB. This unit is responsible for protecting the constitutional
[00:08:51] order. Sidov has been at the head of the service since
[00:08:54] 2006. He began his career in the Leningrad KGB, so
[00:08:58] he is considered part of the St. Petersburg Chekist group. Sidov was
[00:09:02] described in an interview by former employee of the Second Service of the FSB,
[00:09:05] Alexander Fedotov. A year ago he fled Russia.
[00:09:08] As far as I know, Syudov has the right to make a call.
[00:09:12] directly to the first person, Vladimir
[00:09:15] Putin, he is a member of the St. Petersburg
[00:09:18] group, having joined the SBT in 2006,
[00:09:22] he was then, I believe, a Major General, he
[00:09:25] received unusually
[00:09:28] rapid career advancement to General of the Army, because
[00:09:32] not all FSB directors are
[00:09:35] Generals of the Army, and Sidov is formally not even
[00:09:39] a deputy director, he is tough, he is really tough, for example, when he
[00:09:42] called me on the phone
[00:09:46] while I was on the road, because for communication with him I had a phone
[00:09:49] in my office, right without a dial, so I picked up
[00:09:53] the receiver, I understood that he was calling, but when he called from the road, he, for example, never
[00:09:56] greeted, he always said, "This is Sidov," so
[00:10:00] it sounded like a roar, like a lion, such is Sidov
[00:10:04] in practice, Sidov's second service also deals with political
[00:10:08] control, among its areas is the fight against so-called
[00:10:11] political... We all know, thanks to Christo Grozev's investigations,
[00:10:15] the role of officers of the second service in
[00:10:18] the poisoning of Navalny, in the poisoning of other
[00:10:21] oppositionists, and it is important to understand that...
[00:10:25] The second service, we know about its most bloodthirsty
[00:10:28] manifestations and examples, but it has
[00:10:32] a very wide range of functions, for example, few people know that it is the second service that oversees all
[00:10:36] education in Russia, and in the second
[00:10:38] service there is such a department for combating terrorism
[00:10:42] and political extremism, the UBTPA,
[00:10:45] and it is precisely this that is responsible for all education, when I say
[00:10:48] responsible, what does this mean in practice, in practice it means that
[00:10:52] for example in the Ministry of Education there will definitely be... as
[00:10:56] part of the ministry, as a rule, it is the deputy minister,
[00:11:00] who will be delegated there, seconded there from
[00:11:02] the FSB, and he will ensure that no
[00:11:06] orders, no decisions are made that could, God
[00:11:10] forbid, negatively affect the
[00:11:13] patriotic upbringing of future
[00:11:16] youth, in key universities of Russia, there are seconded employees who
[00:11:20] monitor the
[00:11:23] moods of students and...
[00:12:04] And this is especially interesting now, because the personnel struggle within
[00:12:07] the FSB continues, old players do not
[00:12:11] disappear. General Beseda is
[00:12:15] in the circle of untouchables,
[00:12:18] that is, whatever he does, nothing will happen to him. Well, yes, he failed
[00:12:21] the Ukrainian direction, well, yes.
[00:12:25] He paid too much attention to Yanukovych,
[00:12:29] Azarov, the former prime minister, who whispered
[00:12:32] in his ear that Ukrainians
[00:12:35] were just waiting for Russian tanks and would
[00:12:38] meet them with lard and garlic, this did not
[00:12:41] happen, therefore Beseda was
[00:12:45] removed from the leadership of the fifth service
[00:12:48] of the FSB, the same FSB intelligence, and
[00:12:51] moved closer to
[00:12:54] the administration. president,
[00:12:57] he works as a consultant,
[00:13:00] lives in luxury, nothing will happen to him,
[00:13:03] everything is great for him. While the struggle for power,
[00:13:07] business assets and elite privileges continues within the agency,
[00:13:10] the main result of the special service's work
[00:13:13] remains deplorable, decades of complete carte blanche
[00:13:17] from the Kremlin and multi-billion dollar budgets have resulted only in a series
[00:13:20] of spectacular failures on the external and internal fronts.
[00:13:24] About the most resonant fatal mistakes. The FSB of Vladimir
[00:13:28] Putin's era in our correspondent's material. Checklist
[00:13:31] of questions to an FSB officer. I deleted
[00:13:33] the correspondence.
[00:13:36] We will restore it. I created a fake account.
[00:13:39] We will identify it. I used someone else's SIM card.
[00:13:43] We will find out. I received payment in cryptocurrency. We will de-anonymize.
[00:13:46] The Sverdlovsk FSB department explains in memes. Deleted correspondence,
[00:13:50] turned on VPN, bought someone else's SIM card, it won't help. There
[00:13:54] are no anonymous people on the Internet. Terrorist
[00:15:25] attacks on four military airfields, when drones taking off from
[00:15:28] trucks hit strategic Russian bombers,
[00:15:32] oil refineries that the Ukrainian Armed Forces hit with almost 200
[00:15:35] successful strikes, also remained without preventive protection. The FSB's failures
[00:15:39] also include the terrorist attack in Dagestan, when during
[00:15:43] the attack on synagogues, churches and police posts,
[00:15:46] 22 people were killed, and of course, the terrorist attack in Crocus
[00:15:49] with 145 dead. It later became known that the US warned
[00:15:53] of the impending attack 2
[00:15:55] weeks in advance, but this, of course,
[00:15:58] means that our
[00:16:01] relevant law enforcement, special
[00:16:04] services miss these.
[00:16:11] What can be said here, we just need to improve this work and not
[00:16:15] allow such grave failures for us,
[00:16:18] that's all. Failures have accumulated into a whole list, they missed the bomb
[00:16:22] under Daria Dugina's car, they missed the figurine with
[00:16:25] explosives, which was handed to pro-war blogger Vladlen
[00:16:28] Tatarsky in a St. Petersburg cafe with a full house,
[00:16:32] they missed the truck that exploded right on the Crimean bridge,
[00:16:35] to be fair, the FSB also failed to cope with terrorist attacks
[00:16:39] before the war. Nord-Ost, Beslan, blown up planes, explosions in
[00:16:42] the Moscow metro in Domodedovo, all according to
[00:16:45] the international terrorism database Global Terrorism
[00:16:48] Database. From 2000 to 2001, Russia had
[00:16:52] almost 2,000 terrorist attacks and almost 3,500
[00:16:55] dead. It was not customary to punish the FSB for this, it was customary
[00:16:59] to reward, the general who led the headquarters during Nord-Ost,
[00:17:03] where 130 hostages died, received
[00:17:06] a hero star after 3 months. Russia: this
[00:17:09] is a service that primarily deals with
[00:17:12] the security of the country and the state.
[00:17:15] In Russia, firstly, the FSB, I even prefer to
[00:17:19] call it the KGB, so as not to get confused in all these letters,
[00:17:22] it protects primarily itself, protects the regime,
[00:17:26] and I want to note that
[00:17:29] it was structured this way from the moment
[00:17:32] of 1918, in the Cheka documents it is written exactly
[00:17:36] like that. That it is a service that
[00:17:40] protects primarily the regime from its
[00:17:43] ideological opponents, and so it has been throughout the years, if
[00:17:47] you look at the special files of the KGB, the special files of
[00:17:50] the Politburo of the Central Committee, then everywhere it says
[00:17:53] that we must prevent
[00:17:56] the penetration of dangerous ideology into the Soviet Union, we
[00:18:00] must protect against the penetration of this ideology and so
[00:18:03] on. The efforts of special services are primarily aimed at
[00:18:06] preventing such offenses, in order not
[00:18:09] to allow legal opposition activities to develop into
[00:18:13] a radical component. Russia already has TikTok troops.
[00:18:16] This is Kadyrov's army, which instead of fighting, filmed
[00:18:20] videos with shooting at empty houses. Now Russia has
[00:18:23] a couch special service that catches
[00:18:26] Russians on the internet instead of terrorists. And here it has only victories. Last
[00:18:30] year, more than 2,000 people were convicted
[00:18:34] on terrorism charges, twice as many as the year before, almost. journalist Yuri
[00:18:46] Dud, creator of Telegram Pavel Durov, such
[00:18:50] a special service now has different expenses, uniforms will be issued
[00:18:53] less often and not to everyone. We have Evgeny
[00:18:57] Savostyanov on the line, head of state security agencies for
[00:19:00] Moscow and the Moscow region in
[00:19:38] So, its formation took place almost entirely under
[00:19:41] Putin, when he was appointed in
[00:19:45] 1998
[00:19:47] as director of the FSB, he began
[00:19:51] slowly, and even not so slowly, to form this
[00:19:54] St. Petersburg management team of the FSB. But
[00:19:58] if we take the initial period, of course, it was
[00:20:02] simply the dismemberment of the KGB, one could even say to
[00:20:05] some extent the liquidation of the KGB.
[00:20:37] slowly the power component began to grow,
[00:20:40] now we see the transition, well, virtually to the
[00:20:44] thirties, the country is closing down, which means that
[00:20:47] the tasks of counterintelligence are shrinking.
[00:21:50] they didn't chase after Zhirinovsky's supporters, they didn't chase after them, meaning they
[00:21:53] had the opportunity to conduct their political work completely freely,
[00:21:57] now, yes, now, of course, it's not just about protecting the system, right, not
[00:22:01] just about protecting the regime, it's about protecting the one-man rule
[00:22:04] of one person, that is, everything is geared towards
[00:22:07] ensuring Putin's dream of living
[00:22:11] forever, ruling forever, restoring
[00:22:14] empires, dictating his will
[00:22:18] to the world. Can we say that this
[00:22:22] is the nature of the special service under
[00:22:24] Bortnikov?
[00:22:26] Yes, of course, yes, this is precisely the
[00:22:30] transformation of the FSB's
[00:22:34] work in those years, well, not only under
[00:22:37] Bortnikov, it also began under Patrushev, and under Putin himself,
[00:22:41] as I just said, through personnel appointments,
[00:22:45] well, in general, everything is geared towards first strengthening the power of the St. Petersburg
[00:22:48] team, then individual.
[00:22:52] What do you know about the people being tipped to replace
[00:22:56] Bortnikov? FSB General and head of Department
[00:22:59] K-4 of the economic security service of the FSB,
[00:23:02] Ivan Tkachev, First Deputy Director of the FSB
[00:23:06] Sergei Korolev, and Alexei Sidov, head of the Second
[00:23:09] Service. If Tkachev is Sechin's man, can we say that
[00:23:13] the FSB is totally corrupt, and repression is only
[00:23:16] a consequence of this, and not an end in itself?
[00:23:21] No, repression is a consequence of exactly what we were talking about, repression
[00:23:24] is a consequence of the fact that the FSB's task is to ensure
[00:23:28] Putin's unified rule, as
[00:23:31] for the people you listed, I don't know any of them
[00:23:34] personally, we never worked or
[00:23:38] communicated with them, I can only say about Sidov
[00:23:41] that, apparently, I had a most decisive
[00:23:50] he worked as head of the department for
[00:23:53] combating smuggling and corruption, apparently he worked
[00:23:57] in the police direction, that is, in the last
[00:24:00] years of the CPSU's life, even the Soviet Union, the KGB
[00:24:04] was tasked with combating organized crime in
[00:24:08] particular, meaning to strengthen positions
[00:24:11] among corrupt police officers, but this was
[00:24:14] the result of the struggle between Andropov and Shchelkov,
[00:24:17] even then, when the police.
[00:25:10] that the head of the Moscow department, one of the deputy
[00:25:13] chairmen, all the leadership came
[00:25:16] to consult there, and Podelyakin and Polsky and Orlov.
[00:25:20] and Almazov come and say: "What should we do, Evgeny
[00:25:23] Vadimovich, they will all drive us away now." I sat,
[00:25:27] thought, and said, "Look, the country is entering a new regime, there
[00:25:30] is a completely new economy emerging, new tax issues,
[00:25:34] let's build something like the financial guard in Italy,
[00:25:37] a national system of tax police." They liked this
[00:25:40] terrible idea, they left, pushed
[00:25:43] the idea, and that's how the tax police appeared, where Sidov
[00:25:47] then moved to work, and later, by the way, headed
[00:25:50] the Moscow tax police department, replacing my
[00:25:53] former employee Dobrushkin, so
[00:25:56] I really had a very serious influence on his
[00:26:00] fate, let's continue then.
[00:26:10] topic of Sidov, he now heads the Second Service of the FSB, so what do they do, only internal affairs or provocations and sabotages in Europe are also their work? Well, it seems
[00:26:13] they have enough of this work too, but
[00:26:17] of course, it's mainly internal
[00:26:19] tasks,
[00:26:22] they are simply functionally geared towards working within
[00:26:26] the country, sometimes they are allowed to venture
[00:26:29] outside, but in principle, those who...
[00:27:32] their task was to cultivate Western elites, well, not only
[00:27:36] Western African, Latin American,
[00:27:39] Asian, through whom subsequently the influence of the Soviet Union
[00:27:42] abroad would be exercised, and the GRU
[00:27:45] is still purely a military direction,
[00:27:48] uncovering military secrets,
[00:27:51] conducting active operations along the military
[00:27:55] line, I think the same remains
[00:27:59] for the current distribution.
[00:28:02] Therefore, the FSB apparently deals with political
[00:28:06] influence, political information, well,
[00:28:09] mainly influence, now I think that uncovering secrets is becoming
[00:28:13] less and less, so
[00:28:16] the GRU, of course, the GRU and SVR, they
[00:28:19] are engaged in active work abroad, and Evgeny,
[00:28:23] do you allow that Putin can appoint a civilian,
[00:28:27] not a military man, to the post of FSB director, well, I rather
[00:28:31] allow that... someone from the FSO or
[00:28:34] SBP, such experience has already existed, I recall,
[00:28:38] precisely in 1994, when they
[00:28:41] removed me, as head of the Moscow
[00:28:45] department, then it was the deputy director
[00:28:48] of the FSK, and over time
[00:28:52] Barsukov headed
[00:28:54] the FSB, already becoming
[00:28:56] the FSB in 1995, that is, the
[00:28:59] Kremlin clan then decided
[00:29:03] to strengthen control over the special services in a purely personal
[00:29:07] way, so I rather allow that the director
[00:29:10] may be one of the employees of the presidential security
[00:29:14] service, you mean, including one of
[00:29:17] the bodyguards, well, they are all bodyguards, the presidential
[00:29:20] security service is bodyguards, in essence, yes,
[00:29:24] they have different directions of bodyguarding,
[00:29:28] from technical measures, analysis
[00:29:30] of handwriting to physical protection, well, someone from those
[00:29:34] whom Putin particularly trusts, in whom he sees the beginnings
[00:29:37] of organizational abilities, or
[00:29:39] the FSO, that's a larger circle of people, there
[00:29:43] are more personnel,
[00:29:46] although I think that if he does go down this
[00:29:49] path, the decision will be made at the SBP level, and a civilian, well,
[00:29:53] what civilian, and why a civilian, Putin does not
[00:29:56] like such decisive changes, why would he
[00:30:00] need that. What might he be dissatisfied with? Yes,
[00:30:03] the first service, the counterintelligence service and
[00:30:06] military counterintelligence, well
[00:30:09] here - along the line of counterintelligence, I say that
[00:30:12] the tasks are narrowing, the circle of foreigners is getting smaller,
[00:30:15] so there is less work left, along the line of military
[00:30:19] counterintelligence, the most important thing is ensured, already
[00:30:23] the fifth, the fifth year is going on,
[00:30:26] how - the military on the front line submissively go to
[00:30:30] their death, not trying to evade what they are ordered,
[00:30:34] this absolute obedience of the armed forces
[00:30:37] to orders, this is what
[00:30:40] military counterintelligence can record as an asset, as a liability,
[00:30:44] it can allow itself to record the failure
[00:30:48] to prevent a number of strikes that the Ukrainian special services inflict
[00:30:51] on the command staff of the Russian armed forces, but still,
[00:30:54] the fact that the army, unlike, say, some
[00:30:57] Wagner, goes to its death and...