Is the beginning of the end of Russia becoming clearer? Will a coup topple Putin?
A civil war is inevitable" - Putin agent expects coup
Is Russia on the verge of chaos? A Russian Domestic Intelligence Service (FSB)
whistleblower, from whom emails were leaked, warns of an impending civil war.
Jonas Bucher
That's what it's about
- Leaked emails from FSB agents warn of a civil war in Russia.
- Yevgeny Prigoschin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, is said to be preparing a bloody putsch.
- The agents fear that Russia will sink into "total chaos".
Writing regular messages to Russian dissident-in-exile Vladimir Osechkin, an agent dubbed the "Wind of Change" reveals the anger and dissatisfaction within the Russian Intelligence Service (FSB) over the war that began with Russia's February 24invasion of Ukraine . Osechkin is a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net. The emails were provided to Newsweek by Igor Sushko, executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group, a Washington-based nonprofit. Sushko translated the correspondence from Russian into English.
Russia will sink into "terror".
Previous FSB letters written by the same whistleblower and published by Osechkin were analyzed by Christo Grozev, an expert for the FSB. He said he showed the emails to two FSB officers who "had no doubt that they were written by a colleague." The agent's most recent emails in November describe civil unrest and conflict within the Kremlin. An "inevitable" civil war is predicted - Russia will soon "descend into the abyss of terror" as the people grow weary of war.
Prigozhin and Kadyrov as a threat to Putin
The whistleblower focuses on
Yevgeny Prigozhin , an ally of Putin and founder of the Wagner mercenary force, and Chechen leader
Ramzan Kadyrov . Both Prigozhin and Kadyrov have consistently criticized the way in which Putin's war against Ukraine is being conducted and appear to be partly supportive of one another, suggesting that cracks may be forming within the Kremlin. The US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) also came to the conclusion at the end of October that Prigozhin and his military group "could pose a threat to Putin's rule". The FSB agent said, however, that "there is no 'simple transfer of power' model" in Russia.
"There is no way to change everything in Russia so that the country functions as a whole and does not fall into the abyss of terror," says the email, which describes how a civil war in the country would play out.
Prigozhin cannot simply be suppressed
“In the beginning it could be a random riot, with nothing but looting and chaotic skirmishes between everyone involved. Let me try to explain: the struggle of the security agencies against the structures of Prigozhin, a real war against each other, is bad, but generally inevitable," writes the agent. «Or there will be fights between the regions over the sharing of resources. Or a tussle between different forces for control of regions or parts of the country."
But the country could also descend into total chaos: the whistleblower hinted that if the Kremlin posed a threat to Putin's rule, it would not be easy to repress Prigozhin. "And when the particularly 'clever' executives in the FSB gloss over Prigozhin as alien to the system and say we have a structure that can neutralize him if necessary, that's nonsense."
“We could lose control of the country”
In an even more urgent Nov. 8 email, FSB whistleblower Osechkin warned that Prigozhin was preparing brigades for “internal Russian terror” amid a spate of protests and unrest in several regions of Russia over reports of fierce fighting more than 1,000 Russians were killed in Ukraine within three days. "If everything goes according to Prigozhin's scenario, we will lose both control and the country," she concluded.