Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin (C), Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (R) and Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov watch events marking Victory Day, in Sevastopol May 9, 2014. Putin flew in to Crimea on Friday, marking the Soviet victory in World War Two and proclaiming the success of the peninsula's seizure from a Ukraine that Russia says has been taken over by fascists. Credit: REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin
Irina Borogan & Andrei Soldatov, CEPA: The Shadow War: Putin Strips Spies of Ukraine Role
Behind-the-scenes maneuvering signals continuing battles for power among the Russian security forces, the siloviki.
Vladimir Putin has removed Russia’s biggest intelligence agency, the FSB, from its role as the primary spy agency for the war in Ukraine and handed responsibility to a heavily militarized branch of military intelligence, the GRU.
The new lead officer, Vladimir Alekseyev, the first deputy head of the GRU, is heavily implicated in several of Putin’s most serious attacks on the West over the past decade. He is accused by the UK and the European Union of overseeing the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury in 2018. An experienced special forces officer, he is also sanctioned by the US for direct cyber interference in the US 2016 election.
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Update #1: Putin strips FSB of Ukraine intelligence-gathering role and hands responsibility to GRU arm led by man 'who orchestrated Salisbury poisoning' (Daily Mail)
Update #2: Putin sacked the FSB and put the secretive GRU spy agency in charge of Ukraine intelligence after a string of failures, top Russian journalists say (Business Insider)
WNU Editor: No one is really privy to how the Kremlin is conducting its war in Ukraine. But what we do know is that Putin's inner circle is still around him, particularly his top intelligence and military officials, and the military campaign continues in Ukrraine.
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