Putin has cleared more than 100 FSB agents in apparent retaliation amid the quagmire of Ukraine’s invasion

Invasion of Russia Ukraine It’s not going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin appears intent on blaming his old colleagues in the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the KGB’s successor intelligence agency – for the quagmire.

put it in He reportedly purged more than 100 FSB agents, and his government sent the head of the department in charge of Ukraine to prison.

Russia invades Ukraine: live updates

About 150 FSB officers have been dismissed, The Times of London mentioned Monday. The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service, a squad created by Putin – then the director of the FSB – in 1998 to carry out operations in countries of the former Soviet Union, with the goal of keeping those countries in Russia’s orbit.

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Authorities placed Serge Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest last month. The newspaper “The Times” reported that he has since been transferred to the Lefortovo prison, which is run by the Federal Security Service in Moscow. The NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, used prison for interrogation and torture during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s.

Andrei Soldatov, an expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CIPA), told The Times that the move sent a “very strong message” to other elites in Russia.

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“I was surprised by this,” Soldatov said. “Putin could easily have fired him or sent him to a regional post in Siberia. Lefortovo is not a nice place and sending him there is a sign of how seriously Putin takes these things.”

Soldatov noted that Russian authorities may suspect Beseda of passing information to the CIA.

Analysts previously told Fox News that Beseda’s house arrest appeared to be a form of retaliation for intelligence mistakes in Ukraine.

Soldatov said the Fifth Service represents “the most sensitive department of the FSB, which is responsible for espionage in Ukraine. Now it seems that Vladimir Putin has finally realized that the intelligence he obtained before the invasion was not very accurate. And he started looking around to try to find someone to blame.” “.

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Ukrainian intelligence releases the names of more than 600 alleged Russian spies

While Russian forces are fighting for control of territory in Ukraine, Moscow is also fighting an intelligence war. United State The FBI announced Last week, it disrupted a Russian military hacking scheme to create a botnet on victims’ devices in the United States and elsewhere. Late last month, Ukrainian intelligence Released An alleged list of more than 600 Russian spies.

Representative Ritchie DN.Y Torres. call him The FBI is investigating the Russian diplomatic complex, located in New York City, which experts previously told Fox News Digital the homes of diplomats who are in the United States to spy on America.

“We are appalled and disturbed by the unwarranted aggressive war that Vladimir Putin has launched against Ukraine. We are appalled by the war crimes he has committed against the Ukrainian people, and in this context I have formally asked the FBI to open an investigation into the reports of the White Tower,” Torres told reporters on Tuesday. The towering “espionage in the Russian diplomatic complex” It is located at 355 West 255th Streetin the Bronx.

The Bronx Democrat described it as a “figurative and literal surveillance structure.”