U.S. deems credible reports that chief of FSB
intelligence agency’s Ukraine unit is under house arrest; bickering between
FSB, defense ministry
By
March
19, 2022 7:00 am ET
The Russian Ministry of Defense building on the banks of the Moskva River in Moscow on Feb. 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
WASHINGTON—Recriminations and
finger-pointing have begun within Russia’s spy and defense agencies, as the campaign that Moscow expected to culminate in
a lightning seizure of Ukraine’s capital has instead turned into a costly and
embarrassing morass, U.S. officials said.
The blame game, which includes
the detention of at least one senior Russian intelligence official, doesn’t
appear to pose any immediate threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
iron grip on power, but the U.S. officials are watching the machinations
closely.
A U.S. official described as
credible reports that the commander of the FSB intelligence agency’s unit
responsible for Ukraine had been placed under house arrest.
The official, in an interview,
also said bickering had broken out between the FSB and the Russian Ministry of
Defense, two of the principal government units responsible for the preparation
of the Feb. 24 invasion.
Photo: Andrey
Rudakov/Bloomberg News
Central Intelligence Agency
Director William Burns told Congress earlier this month that Mr. Putin had
planned to seize Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv within two days, suggesting the
Russian leader expected minimal resistance.
Russian forces instead encountered fierce Ukrainian
counterattacks and
their ground advance stalled this week amid mounting casualties. Four Russian generals have died, the Ukrainian government says. Some U.S.
government calculations estimate as many as 7,000 Russian troops have been
killed in action, though officials caution those are uncertain estimates.
Current and former U.S. officials
say Russian intelligence agencies often shy away from telling their bosses bad
news and may have reinforced Mr. Putin’s views, which he has expressed
publicly, that Ukraine was a dysfunctional country whose leadership would
rapidly collapse as some of its citizens welcomed Russian troops.
“It is hard to imagine some
senior intelligence person talking with Putin and not telling Putin what he
wants to hear, especially if it is a belief that is deeply held, like Putin’s
beliefs about Ukraine,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, a former CIA and National
Security Council official specializing in the region.
“When it comes to this guy, it’s
also clear that the culture of ‘someone is at fault and is going to pay’ is
clearly still operative,” said Mr. Edmonds, now at the nonprofit research
organization CNA, of the Russian president.
Photo: roman
pilipey/EPA/Shutterstock
The Russian embassy didn’t
immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment.
The FSB officer said to be under
investigation and house arrest is Col.-Gen. Sergei Beseda, head of the
intelligence agency’s Fifth Service, also known as the Service for Operational
Information and International Communications.
Another former U.S. intelligence
official who has studied Russia for decades said Mr. Putin, a former FSB chief,
helped create the Fifth Service, which operates as the de facto
foreign-intelligence arm of the overall agency, which is primarily focused on
internal security. It would have shared responsibility for preparing the way
for the invasion of Ukraine, the former official said. That, he said, likely
included a plot made public by the U.S. and U.K., but denied by Russia, to
eliminate Ukraine’s leadership and install pro-Moscow successors.
Russian investigative journalist
Andrei Soldatov, who co-wrote the first report on Mr. Beseda’s house arrest,
said Mr. Putin may be blaming the FSB for failing to bring about the rapid collapse
of the Ukrainian government that he had expected.
“Putin himself has been
absolutely sure that he understands Ukraine really well,” said Mr. Soldatov,
who is a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a
nonpartisan Washington think tank. “He expected his agencies, and first of all
the FSB, to do some groundwork like cultivating political groups that could
provide support for the Russian invasion. And now obviously that’s not what is
happening.”
Photo: sergei
guneyev/Press Pool
The Russian leader, Mr. Soldatov
added, may also suspect the FSB of leaks, given U.S. intelligence agencies’
detailed knowledge of the Russian invasion plan, some of which Washington made
public. The Fifth Service’s responsibilities include maintaining contact with
foreign intelligence agencies, including on counterterrorism issues, he said.
The U.S. Treasury placed
financial sanctions on Mr. Beseda, along with other Russian individuals and
entities, in 2014 for their alleged role in Russia’s seizure of Crimea and
destabilization of eastern Ukraine.
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Andrea Kendall-Taylor, who was
U.S. deputy national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia from
2015-2018, said Russian security services have overlapping responsibilities and
compete for favor from the Kremlin.
Mr. Putin appears to be singling
out individuals to “scapegoat and pass the blame,” said Ms. Kendall-Taylor, now
at the Center for a New American Security. “I think he’s in a much more
precarious position now.”
Write to Warren P. Strobel at Warren.Strobel@wsj.com and Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com
Putin Places Spies Under House Arrest
After two weeks of halting war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin just suddenly launched an attack in a surprising direction — his beloved agency, the FSB.
https://cepa.org/putin-places-spies-under-house-arrest/
This madman trusts no one, not even his subordinates in government, not even the defense minister, ... not even the world leaders!
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