Defector reveals Putin’s paranoid life, secret network and… – The Irish Times

A senior Russian security official who resigned last year has given a rare insight into the paranoid lifestyle of Vladimir Putin, confirming the details of his secret network, the same offices in different cities, his own quarantine and evasion security protocols.

Gleb Karakulov, who served as a captain in the Federal Security Service (FSO), a powerful body tasked with protecting Russia’s top ranks, said the measures were designed to mask where the Russian president, whom he said “pathologically fears for his life.”

The 36-an-year-old said the train was used because it “can not be investigated any information resource. It was purposefully stolen.”

The Russian investigative outlet Proekt previously reported on the existence of a secret train and railway network between parallel lines and stations near Putin’s residence in the Valdai national park in Novo-Ogaryovo, and near his residence Bocharov Ruchei in Ponto Sochi. .

The Guardian reviewed an interview with Mr Karakulov from the Dossier Centre, a political information source based on the exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and confirmed the documents of senior Russian communications engineers who traveled extensively with Mr Putin and assisted in some of his deliveries. secret messages

Mr Karakulov was a member of the “field team” of the Presidential Communications Directorate, which encrypted the messages of top Russian officials, and estimated that he had traveled more than 180 times with top officials. It appears that there has been a high level of official intelligence failure since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In the interview, Karakulov called Putin a “war criminal” and told fellow officers that he was coming forward with information that was being hidden from the Russian public.

“Our president has lost touch with the world,” he said. “He has been living under the cover of information for the past two years, the greatest age in his residences, which he aptly calls the mass media. He fears his pathological life. He surrounds himself with an inextricable barrier of quarantines and empty information. He only values ​​his life and the lives of his family and friends.”

Mr. Karakulov described the virtual state of the state, which includes firefighters, food testers and other engineers who have traveled with Putin on his travels, providing a rare first-hand insight into the Russian president’s level of paranoia and lifestyle. “They call him Bessa, worship him in everything and only ever speak of him in these terms,” ​​he said.

Mr Karakulov also described secret communications for Mr Putin in airplanes, helicopters, handouts, as well as in bomb shelters to visit the Russian embassy in Kazakhstan in October 2022, when Mr Karakulov eventually fled to Turkey and the closed country. from Occafu

I have confirmed that Mr Putin relies heavily for information on relations provided by his security services. Mr Putin did not use a mobile phone or the internet, Mr Karakulov said, and did not even bring a special internet connection with him on foreign trips. “He’s only getting information from his immediate circle, which means he’s living in an information vacuum,” he said.

Mr. Putin is still in quarantine and all the staff working in the same room as him are also undergoing two weeks of quarantine, severely limiting the number of people who have personal contact with him.

Mr. Karakulov said that Mr. Putin was employed in identical offices in St. Petersburg, Sochi and Novo-Ogaryovo, and that the secret services used fake motorcades and decoy plans to pretend he was leaving. “This trick is to confuse the foreign intelligence, in the first place, and then to prevent anything from life,” he said.

He said Mr Putin’s behavior and lifestyle had changed significantly since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, when the president withdrew from several trips and public appearances.

“He shut himself off from the world,” Mr. Karakulov said. “In his own way.”

The interview did not say what instructions Mr Karakulov had written for Mr Putin or other senior officials, or more about Mr Putin’s preparations for war or policy.

Mr. Karakulov described his risk to the West through Mr. Putin’s visit to Kazakhstan. On the way, his wife and daughter secretly flew to Astana. The failure was postponed several times until near the end of the trip, when Mr. Karakulov told his colleagues that he was not well and fled with his family to the airport. The Dossier Center said Mr Karakulov’s current whereabouts were unknown. The Guardian confirmed that Mr Karakulov was listed as a wanted person in the Russian Interior Ministry’s public database of criminal suspects.

He said he was against the war in Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, but had been waiting to convince his wife to flee together as a family. He said he had not yet spoken to his parents, who were supporters of the war.

While the strict government quarantine has fueled rumors that Mr Putin is seriously ill and is worried about complications from the coronavirus, Mr Karakulov said he has seen no signs that Putin is in poor health. -Guardian