Posted on 11/16/2006 2:09:47 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's defense minister has revealed that two senior Kremlin officials served in military intelligence - underscoring the clout of security service veterans in the administration of President Vladimir Putin.
Sergei Ivanov said that Putin's envoy to southern Russia, Dmitry Kozak, and a deputy Kremlin chief of staff, Vladislav Surkov, are both veterans of the Russian military General Staff's Main Intelligence Directorate, known by its Russian acronym GRU.
"I know two well-known people who served their military conscription terms in GRU's Spetsnaz (special forces) - Dmitry Nikolayevich Kozak and Vladislav Yuriyevich Surkov," Ivanov told Rossiya state television late Sunday in an interview related to the opening of new GRU headquarters last week.
"Both have privately told me they didn't regret serving two years in spetsnaz - it has given them a lot," said Ivanov.
Since Soviet times, the GRU rivaled the KGB in conducting espionage operations worldwide. Its special forces have been involved in numerous operations in Afghanistan and other countries, as well as anti-terrorism operations and other special missions.
Official biographies of Kozak and Surkov mentioned they served in the military during Soviet times, but didn't refer to their connection to the GRU. "Ivanov suddenly exposed two Russian spies," online news site Gazeta.ru said.
Two powerful Kremlin deputy chiefs of staffs, Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, are reported to be KGB veterans.
Ivanov himself was a career KGB officer who later held a top job in Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main KGB successor agency, before being named defense minister in 2001.
Putin, a 16-year KGB veteran and former chief of the FSB, was first elected president in 2000. Since then, former security services agents have been appointed to the Kremlin and other government agencies.
He would have hard time picking two kremlinites who do NOT have that kind of a background - either in uniform, or as civilian employees, or as informers.
I didn't know there was such a thing as an ex-intelligence agent.
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