April 4, 2023, 08:15 AM
In this video symbol provided through the Dossier Center, a London-based research organization funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Gleb Karakulov gives an interview in Turkey in December 2022. Karakulov, who was guilty of establishing secure communications for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said ethical opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his worry about dying there led him to speak out, despite the dangers to him and his family. He said he hoped to motivate other Russians to speak out as well. “Our president has become a war criminal,” he said. “It’s time to end this war and avoid silence. “(Central folder via AP) Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Case Center)
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
LONDON (AP) — On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He turned off his phone to turn off the crescendo of pressing and angry messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia, and tried to calm his racing heart.
But he was not a Russian defector. Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin’s elite non-public secret security service, one of the few Russians who fled and made public that he had rank, as well as wisdom of the main intimate points of Putin’s life and potentially classified information.
Karakulov, who was guilty of secure communications, said ethical opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and his worry of dying there led him to speak out, despite the dangers to him and his family. He said he hoped to motivate other Russians to do so as well.
“Our president has a war criminal,” he said. It’s time to end this war and avoid silence. “
Karakulov’s account is sometimes consistent with others who paint the Russian president as a charismatic but increasingly remote leader who uses no mobile phone or internet and insists on having access to Russian state television wherever he goes. It also provided new main points on how Putin’s paranoia appears to have worsened since his resolution to invade Ukraine in February 2022. Putin now prefers to avoid planes and in a special armored train, he said, and ordered a bunker at the Russian embassy in Kazakhstan to be stocked with a secure line of communication in October. — the first time Karakulov has replied to such a request.
In addition to the facts about Putin, Karakulov’s testimony offers an intimate glimpse into a man’s resolve to defect, without telling his own mother, who says she remains a staunch Putin supporter. This raises questions about the intensity of Russian public acceptance of the war and how Putin’s belligerent parties in the West and beyond could take credit for any quiet opposition.
Without discussing his case, a security-educated official from a NATO country said a defection like Karakulov’s “has a very wonderful interest. “He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive political issues.
“It would be a very serious blow to the president himself because he cares incredibly about his protection and his safety is compromised,” he said. a lot. “
PUTIN IS ‘ONLY AFRAID’
As an engineer in a cashier unit of the presidential communications branch of the Federal Protective Service, or FSO, Karakulov was guilty of establishing secure communications for the Russian president and prime minister wherever they went. Although not a confidant of Putin, Karakulov spent years in his service, watching him unusually close from 2009 to the end of 2022.
Karakulov, his wife and son went into hiding and went to speak directly to them due to security restrictions.
The Dossier Center, a London-based investigative organization funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, interviewed Karakulov several times and shared videos and transcripts of more than six hours of the interviews with The Associated Press as well as the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR. , Swedish television SVT and Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK. The Archives Center showed the authenticity of Karakulov’s passport and FSO professional identity card, and checked the main points of his biography with Russian government archives, revealed non-public knowledge and social media posts.
The Associated Press reviewed the Dossier Center documents and independently showed Karakulov’s identity with 3 remedies in the United States and Europe, which were not legal for public speaking. The AP also independently corroborated non-public information, adding Karakulov’s passport numbers, date and position of birth. , two registered addresses and the names and ages of members of his family circle, but he was unable to determine the main points of his desertion.
The AP also showed that Karakulov is listed as a wanted guy in the Russian Interior Ministry’s public database of suspects. The Interior Ministry opened an investigation into a thief opposing Karakulov on Oct. 26 over desertion from the army mobilization, according to documents received through the Dossier Center and noted via the AP.
The FSO is one of the top secret branches of the Russian security services.
“Even when they resign, they never speak, but they know many important points about the personal lives of the president and the prime minister,” said Katya Hakim, a senior fellow at the Dossier Center.
The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment.
Karakulov traveled as part of a complex team, with enough specialized communications devices to fill a KAMAZ truck. He said he has made more than 180 trips with the Russian president and, contrary to widespread speculation, Putin seems to be in better shape than most others. people his age. Putin has canceled only a few trips due to illness and has annual medical checkups, he said.
Unlike the prime minister, Putin does not want secure access to the web when he travels, Karakulov said.
“In my entire department, I had never noticed it with a mobile phone,” she said. “All the data he receives only comes from other people close to him. That is, it lives in a kind of data vacuum.
Karakulov’s paintings have taken him to luxury summit hotels, resorts in Cuba, yachts, and aboard a special armored exercise provided for the Russian president.
Putin’s exercise looks like any other, painted gray with a red stripe to blend in with other railway cars in Russia. Putin didn’t like the fact that planes can only be tracked, as they prefer the stealth of any exercise car, Karakulov said.
“I sense he’s just scared,” she said.
Putin began employing the exercise regularly in the run-up to the February 2022 invasion, Karakulov said. Even last year, Putin continued to insist on strict measures against covid, and FSO workers took turns in a two-week quarantine so that there was an organization of other people authorized to travel with Putin in the exercise, he said.
Putin has placed the same tables in various positions, with the main points corresponding down to the table and tapestries, and official reports say he is in one position when in fact he is in another, according to Karakulov and previous data from a Russian media outlet. When Putin was in Sochi, security officials intentionally claimed he was leaving, bringing a plane and sending a procession of cars, when in fact he was staying, Karakulov said.
“The guys were talking about it and laughing,” he said. “I think it’s an attempt to confuse, first, intelligence, and second, so that there are no assassination attempts. “
FACES OF WARRIORS
Karakulov’s defection was an unexpected turning point for a circle of relatives steeped in the tradition of the patriotic army.
Born in Dagestan, Karakulov grew up in a position for war, believing it was his sacred duty to protect his homeland. After graduating from a military academy, he discovered his position at the OFS.
“Being close to the president sounded good,” he said.
Karakulov’s father is a former military man who worked as a professional photographer, among other jobs. He has a task he calls “Faces of Warriors,” a series of sublime and hagiographic portraits of Russian infantrymen and veterans.
Karakulov’s brother is a government official, records show, and served as a point of contact for a government-backed regional assignment committed to “civic patriotism” and honoring “heroes of the motherland. “
Karakulov’s paintings took him to a world beyond his family. Even as his father and brother marched in patriotic army parades, their own doubts deepened. He is horrified to think that he, too, could unite around the letter Z of the war in Ukraine if his paintings had not taught him to see through the lies of Russian state television.
“Thanks to my paintings at the FSO, I’ve noticed how distorted it is,” he said.
He also began to question the ostentatious spending of Russia’s most sensible leaders. He said he saw officials summon giant delegations to luxury resorts that charge more a night than their monthly salary. Everyone would attend a brief assembly and then hang out for a week. he said.
“If it comes from the budget, then the question is, ‘Isn’t that spending too much cash on one person?'” he said. If it’s not the budget, then it’s general corruption. “
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February was a breaking point, he said. He told his wife he was looking to get out. She didn’t need her young daughter to be beaten up in kindergarten, where children gave patriotic salutes and were told about bombs.
“This is the long term I need for my son,” she said.
With the Russian mobilization crusade in September, Karakulov learned that if he quit his job, he risked being drafted into a war he needed to fight. But even if he stayed, he may be sent to the front.
He learned that some of his colleagues had been sent to Ukraine and killed. He saw footage of FSO crews destroyed by Ukrainian rockets, with dozens of probable deaths.
He was outraged that no one in Russia has declared such deaths.
“There is nothing about them,” Karakulov said. What were they doing there?Why did they get there?
The only conversations I had were with colleagues who seemed to love war. He imagined that others shared his opinions, but he had no way of locating them.
“They just can’t open their mouths,” he said.
Karakulov said he also couldn’t tell his parents about his disappointment, as their minds had been formed through the years they spent watching Russian state television.
As the war hit the evening news, his parents enjoyed the view from the front. He found it to be insufferable and asked his mother to turn off the TV. She refused.
He said he tried to tell her that Ukraine was an independent country, but she immediately interrupted him. “What is it?” she said to him, “Do you want to run away?”Are you some kind of foreign agent?”
He never told them he was leaving.
In October, a series of official meetings in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, gave Karakulov an escape route. He and his wife packed their lives into 3 suitcases. He flew on October 6 with the rest of his team. His wife and daughter joined them two days later, staying in a separate hotel.
But every day, Karakulov discovered some other explanation for why not go.
On the last day of the delegation, 14 October, he learned that he could not wait any longer. His wife retrieved her suitcase from her hotel room so as not to arouse suspicion. He ran away after lunch and told his colleagues he was going to buy souvenirs. .
He was put in a taxi with his wife and daughter and left for the airport around 3 p. m.
“From that point on, it’s just a matter of my own nerves,” he said.
He passed the recording and began receiving messages from colleagues asking him where the flight was with a delay of one hour. You may just feel a remote fury rising against him. At five o’clock in the afternoon, he thought that other people had started looking for him.
“Idiot,” a message.
Fifteen minutes before takeoff, he turned off his phone.
His wife is very upset. They spent the five and a half hours of the flight waiting for something to go wrong.
When they finally passed through passport control in Turkey, Karakulov said it was as if a giant stone had fallen from his soul.
He said he knew many other people would accuse him of being unpatriotic, but he disagrees.
“Patriotism is when you love your country,” he said. In this case, our homeland will have to be saved, because anything crazy and horrible is happening in our country. We want to solve this problem.
THE PRICE OF DISSENT
What holds for Karakulov in the long run, and who dares to follow in his footsteps, is far from clear.
He wasn’t the only one who sought to faint.
On September 27, a few days after Russia’s mobilization, an engineer from an FSO regional center in Siberia named Mikhail Zhilin sneaked through the forest across the border from Kazakhstan. Many Russians fled to Kazakhstan for conscription, but the government denied Zhilin’s asylum application and sent him back to Russia. On March 20, a Russian court sentenced him to six and a half years in a penal colony.
Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political analyst who now lives in Israel and wrote speeches for Putin from 2000 to 2001 and from 2008 to 2010, said he believed most Russian elites were secretly opposed to Putin’s war. He added that if the West had presented them with an exit sanctions strategy, others may simply have left.
“They’re all shocked,” he said. From his point of view, there is no explanation for why to do this because everything is fine. . . Now, suddenly, everything fell apart. . . We are the enemies of the world. “
Gallyamov, like Karakulov, is on the Russian Interior Ministry’s wanted list. He said a defection like Karakulov’s is a blow because the FSO is like a “real elite” above other army and security structures in Russia, charged with protecting the ultimate value of the state. active: Putin himself.
“They will be very angry,” he said. “There will be hysteria. “
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Russian public opinion on the war is divided, but there is little room for public dissent, especially for others inside the system.
“The rule is for the elite to adhere to Putin,” he said.
Those who leave Russia sometimes pay a price to stay clean.
Boris Bondarev, a Russian diplomat in Geneva, resigned in May and denounced the war.
Speaking from an undisclosed location in Switzerland, Bondarev told the AP he was living as a political refugee with a government stipend, with security restrictions he would prefer to leave “deliberately ambiguous. “Sometimes, either for monetary and security reasons. He can’t freely, not even to meet a reporter for a cup of coffee in the city.
“I sent my resumes to dozens of think tanks in the U. S. “The US, UK, Europe and most were ignored,” he said. “They gave me some answers, ‘I’m sorry, but we already have Russian experts. ‘”
He said there are many Russians who quietly oppose the war but dare not speak out, for fear of wasting their livelihood. Some colleagues who left the Russian Foreign Ministry after him contacted him for advice. They were struggling to find work. One returned to Moscow because he may simply not make a living outside of Russia, he said.
Bondarev said he had doubts when he saw photos of other people dining in fancy restaurants in Moscow, living the kind of intelligent life he can no longer afford.
But then remember the prize: brainwashing, propaganda, hypocrisy.
“I would arrive home at nine o’clock and leave at 6 p. m. and in the meantime, I would have to produce a lot of articles explaining why Ukraine attacked Russia,” he said. “I don’t need it. No, no, I can’t complain today. . . I live very, very well.
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Associated Press writers Lynn Berry and Aamer Madhani in Washington, Jamey Keaton in Geneva and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.