Look at almost any recent major news story from Russia, and you’ll find the Federal Security Service, better known as the FSB. Having failed to prevent the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow last month, the agency has played a major role in arresting and apparently torturing the suspected perpetrators. It was FSB agents who arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges just over a year ago. And the FSB has been heavily involved in enforcing Russia’s crackdowns on dissent and LGBTQ+ rights.
At the same time, the FSB is inextricably linked to Moscow’s war against Ukraine. After years of carrying out subversive activities there, it provided Putin with key (though apparently misleading) intel that led him to launch his full-scale invasion in 2022. Since then, its agents have facilitated the deportation of Ukrainian children, tortured an untold number of Ukrainian civilians in so-called “torture chambers,” and tried to plant former ISIS members in Ukrainian battalions.
And let’s not forget that Putin himself was shaped by his career in the FSB’s predecessor agency, the Soviet-era KGB. Putin’s rise to power was defined by his image as a strong man who could ensure security and stability. Since assuming the presidency, he’s given himself direct authority over the FSB and steadily expanded its ability to surveil and repress Russian citizens.
To learn about the Russian FSB’s evolution over the last three decades, its operations in Russia and beyond, and its possible future after Putin, Meduza in English senior news editor Sam Breazeale spoke to Dr. Kevin Riehle, an expert in foreign intelligence services and the author of The Russian FSB: A Concise History of the Federal Security Service.
Timestamps for this episode:
Как поддержать нашу редакцию — даже если вы в России и вам очень страшно
Returning to the talks that could have ended the war in Ukraine
How Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov dies
Migration and discrimination in Putin’s Russia
Daniel Roher and Julia Ioffe remember the Navalnys
How terrorism’s geopolitics brought tragedy to Moscow
Is Europe preparing for a wider Russian invasion?
Politico’s Alex Ward on Biden’s Russia and Ukraine policy
The Russian space nukes scare
Christopher Miller on how war came to Ukraine
The death of Alexey Navalny
Yandex’s restructuring and the future of Kremlin tech control
How Russia targets its critics abroad in wartime
How doomed presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin rallied antiwar Russians
Why hasn’t the West seized Russia’s frozen sovereign assets?
The evolution of Russia’s combat recruitment
Memories of Russia
Growing up German in Soviet Kazakhstan, with Lena Wolf
How studying Russia became a paradox
Russia’s ban on the ‘LGBT movement’
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