Related: Russia’s FSB agency tasked with engineering coups in Ukrainian cities, UK believes [...] Responsibility for Ukraine within the FSB lies with its fifth service, responsible for intelligence operations in former Soviet states. Its leader is Sergei Beseda, who was placed on US, EU and UK sanctions lists in 2014. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168432141
Foreign reports have indicated that Russian authorities are bickering over their invasion of Ukraine.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF Published: MARCH 20, 2022 03:41 Updated: MARCH 20, 2022 14:55
Law enforcement officers guard the entrance to Domodedovo airport as part of increased security measures following the deadly blast, January 2011 (photo credit: RIA Novosti/Wikimedia Commons)
Russian authorities are split over their invasion of Ukraine, with a commander of the Russian intelligence service placed under house arrest, according to reports in recent weeks.
Colonel-General Sergei Beseda, the head of the Fifth Service of the FSB intelligence service, and Beseda's deputy were being held under house arrest, according to a report by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA .. https://cepa.org/putin-places-spies-under-house-arrest/ ) non-partisan think tank.
The Fifth Service was responsible for providing Russian President Vladimir Putin with intelligence about Ukraine leading up to the war. "It looks like two weeks into the war, it finally dawned on Putin that he was completely misled. The department, fearful of his responses, seems to have told Putin what he wanted to hear," Russian investigative journalists Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov wrote in the CEPA report.
Russian authorities have not confirmed the reports that Beseda is under house arrest.
The two journalists added that they have been following the Department of Operative Information (DOI), the FSB's foreign intelligence branch, since it was founded as a directorate in the late 1990s.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via a video link at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia March 11, 2022. (credit: SPUTNIK/MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/KREMLIN VIA REUTERS)
Beseda was targeted by sanctions implemented by the US, UK and European Union in 2014, amid unrest in Ukraine and the Russian occupation of Crimea.
While foreign media reports and statements by foreign officials indicated that Russian authorities initially believed that they would be able to take Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, within a matter of days, nearly a month later Russian forces have still failed to do so, as Ukrainian forces put up a strong resistance and Western-aid pours in to the country.
Jeffrey Edmonds, a former CIA and National Security Council official specializing in the region, told The Wall Street Journal that "It is hard to imagine some senior intelligence person talking with Putin and not telling Putin what he wants to hear, especially if it is a belief that is deeply held, like Putin’s beliefs about Ukraine."
“The formal basis for conducting these searches is the accusation of the embezzlement of funds earmarked for subversive activities in Ukraine," said Osechkin to the Times. “The real reason is unreliable, incomplete and partially false information about the political situation in Ukraine.”
Osechkin has posted whistleblower reports allegedly written by analysts from the FSB in recent weeks on his Gulagu.ru website, with one analyst writing "now they are methodically blaming us (FSB). We are being reprimanded for our analysis,” according to The Hill.
A number of additional Russian officials have been removed from their positions amid the war in Ukraine, including Gen. Roman Gavrilov, with Russian media reports split on whether he was dismissed or resigned.
Bellingcat investigator Christo Grozev reported that Gavrilov had been detained as well, possibly for "leaks of military [information] that led to loss of life."
Kremlin Blame Game Over Ukraine Lands Spy Boss Under House Arrest
INFIGHTING
Published Mar. 19, 2022 9:26AM ET
Reuters
It appears that the Kremlin blame game over who is responsible for Russia’s faltering invasion of Ukraine has landed one top spy official under arrest, The Wall Street Journal reports. U.S. officials told the newspaper that when Vladimir Putin’s plan to seize Kyiv in two days didn’t happen—thanks to ferocious resistance from the Ukrainians who have killed thousands of Russian soldiers—bickering broke out between the FSB intelligence agency and the Russian Ministry of Defense. Now the head of the FSB unit in charge of Ukraine, Col.-Gen. Sergei Beseda, is apparently in the doghouse.
A Stricken Ukrainian City Empties, and Those Left Fear What’s Next
"How a Chechen Abduction Exposes Putin’s Problems at Home"
The parking lot of an apartment building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday was littered with debris from Russian bombings. Credit...
After the deadly strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, those who stayed behind are grim about the future: “We think we will be swept off the face of the earth.”
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak Photographs by Tyler Hicks
April 10, 2022
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Two days after more than 50 people were killed on its platforms by a missile strike, the only sounds at the Kramatorsk railway station on Sunday morning were a distant air-raid siren and the rhythmic sweeping of broken glass.
“The town is dead now,” said Tetiana, 50, a shopkeeper who was working next to the station when it was attacked as thousands of people tried to board trains to evacuate the eastern city, fearing it would soon be besieged by Russian forces.
Friday’s strike was a gruesome turn...
[...]
With Moscow’s decision to shift the focus of its war to eastern Ukraine, the people who remain in Kramatorsk fear that they will soon be shelled into oblivion, like the residents of Kharkiv and Mariupol, two other cities that have been ruthlessly assaulted by Russian forces. It feels like an assault here is inevitable: Cutting off Kramatorsk would partly cut off Ukrainian forces fighting in the eastern breakaway regions where Russia is consolidating.
[...]
Kramatorsk and the neighboring, but smaller, city of Sloviansk are likely to be the first two cities that will be attacked by whatever Russian forces are able to reconstitute in the region following their defeat and withdrawal from around Kyiv, the capital. For now, the Russian front line traces like a jaw around the two cities.
Encircling and cutting off Kramatorsk and Sloviansk would allow the Russians to isolate the Ukrainian forces that are holding their old front lines in the two breakaway regions — a maneuver, if successfully carried out, that would mean disaster for the Ukrainian military, as much of their forces are there.
Sgt. Andriy Mykyta, a soldier in Ukraine’s border guard, was in Kramatorsk to try to head off that fate.
An apartment building heavily damaged by recent Russian bombings in Kramatorsk on Sunday. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“There will be a serious fight,” Sergeant Mykyta said. “This is a tactic of the Russians: They take cities as hostages.”
On Sunday, as he bought an energy drink and some snacks from one of the remaining open grocery stores in the city, the sergeant looked much like every other uniformed Ukrainian service member: a blue stripe on his arm, weathered boots and a jagged tattoo jutting above his collar.
But he was, in fact, one of the most valuable members of the Ukrainian armed forces, a part of the select group that was quickly trained by NATO forces (a several-day course that was supposed to last at least a month, he said) to use some of the more complicated weapons that were helping push back Russian forces: the Javelin and NLAW antitank systems.
But he played down the missile systems’ importance, saying, “These weapons are like a doughnut at the end of the day.” He said that the real fight would come down to whatever side could withstand its enemy’s artillery the longest and who retained the will to fight.
[...]
Maria Budym, a 69-year-old resident of Kramatorsk, shrugged off the artillery and the evacuations. She was staying. When Russian-backed separatists briefly held Kramatorsk in 2014, they were welcomed to the city by some of the pro-Russian population before being driven off by Ukrainian defenders, she said.
This time, she added, the Russians will have to deal with her.
“Only cowards and people already displaced by the war have fled the city,” she said, standing in a blue fleece pullover in front of her hollowed-out Soviet-style apartment. “Our soldiers will defend this city to their last breath.”
Besides, Ms. Budym added, with anger in her eyes: “I have a pipe in my apartment. I’ll use it on whoever comes in that door.”
An apartment building that was damaged Friday. “We are being encircled. We understand that,” said one woman, who planned to stay in Kramatorsk to care for her ailing mother.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
