Vlad Putin photo from last week
Posted on 04/12/2022 7:48:47 AM PDT by dennisw
Putin treats his former colleagues as scapegoats for Ukraine war setbacks, analyst says
Russia's invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan, and President Vladimir Putin seems intent on blaming his old colleagues at the Federal Security Bureau (FSB) – the intelligence agency successor to the KGB – for the quagmire.
Putin reportedly purged more than 100 agents from the FSB, and his government sent the head of the department responsible for Ukraine to prison.
About 150 FSB officers have been dismissed, The Times of London reported Monday. The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service, a division that Putin – then director of the FSB – set up in 1998 in order to carry out operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union, aiming to keep those countries in Russia's orbit.
Authorities placed Sergei Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest last month. He has since been moved to the FSB-run Lefortovo prison in Moscow, The Times reported. The NKVD, the KGB's predecessor, used the prison for interrogation and torture during Stalin's 1930s Great Purge.
This move sent a "very strong message" to other elites in Russia, Andrei Soldatov, an expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), told The Times.
"I was surprised by this," Soldatov said. "Putin could have very easily just fired him or sent him off to some regional job in Siberia. Lefortovo is not a nice place and sending him there is a signal as to how seriously Putin takes this stuff."
Soldatov suggested that Russian authorities may suspect Beseda of having passed information to the CIA.
Analysts previously told Fox News that Beseda's house arrest sentence seemed a form of retaliation for intelligence errors in Ukraine.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
MORE>>>>>>>>>
Soldatov said the Fifth Service represents “the most sensitive department of the FSB department, which is in charge of espionage in Ukraine. And now it looks like Vladimir Putin finally understood that the intelligence he was given before the invasion was not extremely accurate. And he has started looking around trying to find someone to blame.”
A federal government that fires people for incompetence or gross negligence?
No way?!?!?!
We promote them!
Blaming the pee-poor intel about the Ukraine on the group in charge of collecting intel about the Ukraine seems kinda understandable, doesn’t it?
Impossible!
The Rashists are beating the snot out of the ukes, dontcha know? /s
Vlad Putin photo from last week
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine appears not to be going according to plan”
Its going STRICTLY according to plan. Little Pukin says so.
The only flaw in the Putin-type model is that Putin won't fire himself.
Fox and the Daily Mail would have us believe that they are in the know about what is going on inside Russia. Skeptical. Their sources are likely the same ones who were promoting Russia-Russia-Russia during Trump’s first term in office.
I find it fully plausible that the fsb was had no clue as to the buzz saw that was waiting for russia in the Ukraine. Why the consensus opinion around the world was that Russia could walk over Ukraine if they really wanted to. fsb just followed consensus world opinion.
US intelligence does the same thing most of the time. any turn of world events US intelligence has typically missed over the last 30 years.
I was for the first time impressed with US intelligence at the opening of the war in the way the they telegraphed russian plans for invasion before the beginning of this war.
That’s also what has spooked putin.
Likely too there is a continuing feed of intelligence to the Ukrainians.
Old Soviet joke:
Q - What is the tallest building in Moscow?
A - FSB (KGB) Headquarters. From its cellar you can see Siberia!
“Pahshli sahbahkoo k Sihbeer!”. (Send the dog to Siberia) Ras-Putin
This is like when George Bush and John McCain could look into Putin’s eyes - and see his soul.
“I find it fully plausible that the fsb was had no clue as to the buzz saw that was waiting for russia in the Ukraine. Why the consensus opinion around the world was that Russia could walk over Ukraine if they really wanted to.”
Was it an intelligence failure, or a failure of the Russian army?
Most of us thought the Russians could do something similar to what we can:
1) Shock and awe airstrikes that would destroy military infrastructure on day one.
2) Cyber attacks that would take down command and control system.
3) Special forces that would be in the cities eliminating high value targets.
If they had done that Ukraine may well have surrendered in week one.
It turns out all the Russians could do was roll out a huge number of tanks manned by undertrained conscripts.
Dead Putinistas salute!
I don’t care what Russia and Ukraine do to each other.
Good point. We now know it was Putin, Biden, Hillary and the DNC that smeared Trump.
I read that Putin eliminates anyone that starts developing any political clout.
Consequently there is nobody with the skills or experience to replace him.
“Quagmire” — I think the last time I heard that word was around 1973 regarding a war in SE Asia.
It turns out all the Russians could do was roll out a huge number of tanks manned by undertrained conscripts.
......
That was the second wave.
The first wave was the decapitation attack on Kiev on the first day.
That was a pretty under reported event.
The russians sent in a whole bunch of their best men. They were susposed to fly into the airport and drive drive downtown or something like that. Their planes were mostly shot down and their best men were killed before they even got boots on the ground. Or something like that.
Those that got on the ground didn’t do much better.
The whole thing had the air of the jimmy carter commando plane crash in Iran in 1978 or so.
So why the under preparation?
The impression given by the media is that Putin and his soldiers thought they would be welcomed with flowers.
If this is true, then the FSB department charged with bringing bringing ukraine back to mother russia was not just negligent but treasonously negligent by russian standards. That department would have been better not to have existed at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.