Putin has allegedly placed Russia’s head of foreign intelligence under house arrest because he didn’t warn him that Ukraine would resist invasion.
Vladimir Putin has blamed the head of foreign intelligence at Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) for the embarrassing defeats his army has faced in Ukraine.
According to respected foreign services author Andrey Soldatov, Sergey Beseda has been placed under house arrest for allegedly telling Putin that Ukraine would surrender easily if invaded.
The ‘official’ reasons for the arrest have been noted as embezzlement of money to fund subversive and undercover work in Ukraine, as well as supplying false information, as reported by The Daily Mail.
It has also been reported that Anatoly Bolyukh, Beseda’s deputy and head of the operational information department, has also been arrested.
Putin claims that the FSB told him that Ukraine was weak, and burdened by neo-Nazi groups, so they wouldn’t put up much of a fight if invaded.
Obviously they were wrong. The brave leadership of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has inspired civilians to support their government, allowing Ukrainian forces to hold off Russia’s military for over a week, while handing Putin some embarrassing defeats.
It’s hard to know which accounts are reliable, but European intelligence has suggested that Russia has lost between 6,000 and 9,000 soldiers so far.
When Putin launched the attack on February 24, he anticipated that the invasion would be complete within a couple of days. But the conflict has now been active for more than two weeks, and Russia have had few successes in that timeframe.
