Vladimir Putin has ‘purged more than 100 FSB agents’ and thrown an intelligence chief in jail after the Ukraine invasion failed to make any rapid breakthrough.
The Russian leader thought his army would crush Ukraine in days and is said to blame his spies for this miscalculation
Now Christo Grozev, who has previously uncovered information about the Russian intelligence services for Bellingcat, has added more weight to those claims. Western intelligence agencies believe Mr Putin thought he was certain of a swift victory in Ukraine and that invading forces would be welcomed by many.
He was placed under house arrest when the scale of the miscalculation first started to become clear and has now been locked up in Lefortovo, a feared prison which housed the victims of Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist, said he thought it was possible the Russian leader suspects his spy chief of handing intel to the West.
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