FSO Defector Says Putin Is Obsessed With Paranoia-- This Defection Has Likely Made That Worse

Feel like stepping away from Señor Trumpanzee for a moment? You likely never heard of Gleb Karakulov, right? When I was in Moscow I used to get local news (and perspective) from the English language Moscow Times which was given away freely at all the hotels frequented by English speakers. In 2017 is switched to on-line only and was soon banned by the Kremlin for being a little too independent. It has since moved to Amsterdam, has a Russian language edition and can be counted as oppositional. On Tuesday, they published a report, Member of Kremlin Guard Flees Russia, Details Putin’s Secret Life, that is certainly not being covered in Russia. Karakulov says he jumped ship because he considers Putin a war criminal and fled because it was no longer possible for him “to carry out his criminal orders or stay in his service.”

Karakulov, they wrote, was a 36 year old captain in the Federal Protection Service (something like our Secret Service) responsible for providing encrypted communications to Putin and “said he has fled Russia over the war in Ukraine and disclosed details about the Russian leader in an interview with the Dossier Center investigative website, founded by the exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Tuesday.” They explained that he “had served as an engineer in the Federal Guard Service (FSO) presidential communications unit and accompanied Putin on more than 180 trips over the past 13 years. The unit ensures that Putin and his prime minister are provided with 24/7 encrypted communications. Karakulov told the Dossier Center he managed to flee with his family to Turkey while accompanying Putin on a visit to Kazakhstan for a summit in mid-October 2022.”

Knowing that his defection violated Russian law, Karakulov said: “It would have been an even bigger crime if I had stayed in my job.”

“I consider this man [Putin] a war criminal,” Karakulov told the Dossier Center, which is funded by exiled former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Karakulov is the highest-ranking member of Russia’s special services known to have defected in the country’s modern history, the Dossier Center said.

Over the course of an hour-long interview, he shared details about Putin’s habits, family and health.

Karakulov said Putin still does not use smartphones or the internet and demands that Russian state-run television be available on his foreign trips.

He added that Putin remains paranoid about getting infected with Covid-19 three years into the pandemic and forces every employee to quarantine for two weeks before they can be in the same room with him.

“He’s been living in an information cocoon for the past couple of years,” Karakulov told the Dossier Center. “He’s pathologically afraid for his life.”

“He has shut himself off from the world with all kinds of barriers: the quarantine, the information vacuum. His take on reality has become distorted.”

Still, Karakulov denied speculation that the 70-year-old leader was suffering from an undisclosed illness: “He’s in better health than many other people his age.”

The FSO engineer corroborated some of the past high-profile investigative reports into Putin’s personal life and wealth.

Karakulov said Putin’s family, which the Russian president has never publicly identified, was an “open secret” that had been discussed among fellow FSO officers. He recalled colleagues mentioning Putin staying in his residences with his rumored daughters or partners.

Karakulov said he had confirmed with a colleague the existence of Putin’s opulent palace on the Black Sea after it was detailed in a high-profile investigation by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's team.

Karakulov also confirmed reports that Putin has identical offices in several residences. He shared an anecdote of witnessing Putin at his office in Sochi while a television report said he was holding a meeting at his residence outside Moscow, hundreds of kilometers to the north.

The Dossier Center said it had recorded the interview with Karakulov sometime in late 2022 and published it Tuesday after ensuring that he and his family had left Turkey and were in a safe location.

Th escape with his wife and daughter sounds like a spy-thriller. The Associated Press reported that it “confirmed that Karakulov is listed as a wanted man in the Russian Interior Ministry’s public database of criminal suspects. The ministry initiated a criminal investigation against Karakulov on Oct. 26 for desertion during a time of military mobilization… Karakulov’s account generally conforms with others that paint the Russian president as a once charismatic but increasingly isolated leader, who doesn’t use a cellphone or the internet and insists on access to Russian state television wherever he goes. He also offered new details about how Putin’s paranoia appears to have deepened since his decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Putin now prefers to avoid airplanes and travel on a special armored train, he said, and he ordered a bunker at the Russian Embassy in Kazakhstan outfitted with a secure communications line in October— the first time Karakulov had ever fielded such a request.”

Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst now living in Israel who was a speechwriter for Putin from 2000 to 2001 and again from 2008 to 2010, said he believes the majority of Russia’s elites secretly oppose Putin’s war. He added that if the West had offered them an exit strategy instead of sanctions, more might have left.

“They are all shocked,” he said. “From their point of view, there was no reason to do this because everything was okay … now all of a sudden, everything collapsed. … We’re enemies of the world.”

Gallyamov, like Karakulov, is on the wanted list of Russia’s Interior Ministry. He said a defection like Karakulov’s is a particular blow because the FSO is like a “royal elite” above other military and security structures in Russia, charged with protecting the state’s most precious asset: Putin himself.

“They will be very angry,” he said. “There will be hysterics.”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russian public opinion about the war is divided but there is little space for public dissent, especially for people working within the system.

“The rule is that the elite stick to Putin,” she said.

Those who do leave Russia often pay a price to keep their conscience clear.

Boris Bondarev, a career Russian diplomat in Geneva, quit in May and denounced the war.

Speaking from an undisclosed location in Switzerland, Bondarev told the AP he is living as a political refugee on a government allowance, with security constraints he’d rather leave “deliberately ambiguous.” He can’t find a job and has had to move apartments several times, for both financial and safety reasons. He can’t travel freely — not even to meet a reporter for a cup of coffee in town.

“I sent my CVs to dozens of think tanks in the U.S., in the U.K., in Europe, and most were ignored,” he said. “I got a few answers that ‘sorry, but we already have Russia experts.’”

He said there are plenty of Russians who quietly oppose the war but don’t dare speak out, for fear of losing their livelihoods. A few colleagues who quit Russia’s Foreign Ministry after he did contacted him for advice. They were having trouble finding work. One returned to Moscow because he couldn’t make a living outside of Russia, he said.

Bondarev said he sometimes has second thoughts when he sees pictures of people eating out at nice restaurants in Moscow, living the kind of good life he can no longer afford.

But then he remembers the price: brainwashing, propaganda, hypocrisy.

“I would come to my office at 9 and leave at 6 p.m. and in between I would have to produce numerous papers explaining why Ukraine attacked Russia,” he said. “I don’t want it. No, no, I can’t complain today. … I live very, very well.”