Putin purges 150 FSB agents over Russian failures in Ukraine

Nearly 150 agents in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) are being dismissed as Russian President Vladimir Putin fumes over his stalled invasion of Ukraine.

The purge was reported by Christov Grozev, executive director of investigative organization Bellingcat, who said his source had been fired for “reporting false information to the Kremlin about the real situation in Ukraine before the invasion.”

“I can say that although a significant number of them have not been arrested they will no longer work for the FSB,” Grozev told Popular Politics, an independent YouTube channel about Russian current affairs.

The Russian president has blamed the FSB for underestimating the strength of Ukrainian resistance, as well as overestimating the strength of Russian forces. The purge is yet another sign of Putin’s anger with the invasion and the intelligence service he was once the director of.

Elements of the spy agency are also not in lockstep with the Kremlin. The Chechen special forces sent to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky were reportedly neutralized thanks to intel from sympathetic sources within the FSB.

Everyong let go were from the Fifth Service, a branch of the FSB set up by Putin in 1998 to monitor former territories of the Soviet Union, like Ukraine.

The Fifth Division’s former chief, Sergei Beseda, was arrested and sent to Moscow’s Lefortovo prison – the same used interrogation and torture during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s. He is being held for embezzlement, but the basis for his arrest is most likely the botched invasion.

Current FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov’s relationship with Putin has become strained over the invasion’s failure thus far. Ukrainian intelligence said that Bortnikov is the leading candidate to replace Putin in the event of a palace coup.