Putin ‘purges’ 150 FSB agents in response to Russia’s botched war with Ukraine

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-purges-150-fsb-agents-in-response-to-russias-botched-war-with-ukraine-lf9k6tn6g

by mzs • 4 years ago

112 89 4 years ago

thetimes.co.uk

toomanyrichies• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/SsPOS

mc32• 4 years ago

After all, he did learn from Soviet history. Looks like he’s using Stalin’s template. What was his KGB nom d’espion in the DDR, again?

BeetleB• 4 years ago

Comparing this to Stalin's purges is borderline offensive. The latter's purge affected almost all walks of society. I recall when I was in grad school I would read the biographies of famous physicists/mathematicians, and virtually all the Soviet ones had siblings or parents who had been killed in the Purge.

It also crippled the Soviet army, which is why a much "weaker" Finland held its own when the Soviets attacked them - the majority of the senior, capable military leaders had either been killed or imprisoned in the Purge, leaving behind a rather incompetent military.

eyelidlessness• 4 years ago

It’s also borderline offensive to treat Putin’s regime as anywhere near as transparent about how people from all walks of society are treated. Famous scientists and mathematicians just mysteriously fall from windows with no apparent explanation. People less famous either meet less notable ends or just aren’t there to be purged from anything worth purging in the first place.

None of which is to say Putin’s regime is anywhere near the atrocity machine that Stalin’s was. That’s an extreme that’s hard to imagine and very exclusive. But this notion that Putin’s regime isn’t committing the kinds of mass violence on Russian society because it isn’t on full display is neglecting both how his own regime has operated as well as how most did/have since the 70s-80s. They just do it with secrecy and plausible deniability.

eps• 4 years ago

Which famous mathematicians fell out of windows recently?

mcv2• 4 years ago

Putin is not Stalin, but he's certainly trying to be a good imitation. He admires Stalin and it shows.

boomboomsubban3• 4 years ago

Firing people is "purging" now? Their source article only details two arrests, with twenty addresses being searched.

thawaya3113• 4 years ago

Purging means to remove. So yes? Firing has always meant purging.

It’s the comparison to Stalinist purges that’s a problem.

yakak4• 4 years ago

Large numbers of people purged by firing don't properly go away so purges by a dictator usually get more brutal in their treatment of the purged over time.

koonsolo3• 4 years ago

Firing does not mean sending people to jail because they did a bad job.

Normally an employer can only fire you. But when your employer is also a dictator, you can indeed end up in jail for bad performance.

So no, firing is not really a proper term.

naoqj• 4 years ago

But are these people going to jail?

javajosh• 4 years ago

It seems strange to me that there aren't more defections. The West can offer a great deal of money to defectors, presumably, and if rumors of rampant Russian cynicism and greed are to be believed, why not just take it? (I'd also be curious to find out how many Russian pilots and tank crews have taken Ukraine up on it's $1M/$500k offer.)

hdjjhhvvhga2• 4 years ago

I don't think it's easy to pull off. Practically speaking, you need to know someone on the other side, convince them you are real, while hiding all these efforts from everyone else. A difficult task in a society full of distrust.

euroderf• 4 years ago

OTOH there are people paid to find defectors and exfiltrate them.

dunefox• 4 years ago

I think newspapers might be of help with something like this.

throwaway7033• 4 years ago

Taking money from the West doesn't keep you alive; if I were a Russian would-be defector I'd be worried about ending up like Alexander Litvinenko (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Litvinenko).

mushbino• 4 years ago

The last time they reported something like this, it turned out to not be true. So much wartime disinfo going around.

yakak4• 4 years ago

Was it not? Putin and Trump seem to share the same playbook of doing both things to gauge response and cause confusion. It's pretty hard to ask Putin's upper staff whether the spent a few nights in jail.

ehvatum2• 4 years ago

The compulsion to equate Trump and Putin is, itself, propagandist.

a0-prw• 4 years ago

Let's see how well "botched war" does in the coming weeks and months. There is a big, as in enormous, battle coming in Eastern Ukraine and if the Russian encirclement is successful, there will be very little between Kiev and Russia.

zibzab• 4 years ago

This is probably one area where software projects and wars differ:

When things go bad in a war, you can always throw more bodies on it to turn it around.

hdjjhhvvhga2• 4 years ago

Until you can't.

torginus• 4 years ago

This is not true. Most credible military analysts say that Russia's Achilles heel in this war is the lack of trained personnel in sufficient numbers.

vintermann• 4 years ago

Oh no, you definitively can't. Not when you're the one invading.

People always bring up WW2, but in WW2 USSR was being invaded, and had a lot of material support from the west. They could keep "throwing more bodies on it" because

1. Those bodies were still very motivated, since they were being invaded and,

2. They had useful equipment for those bodies, in significant part from western support (lend/lease etc.

Ukraine is more like WW1 for Russia. That didn't end so well for the Russian leadership.

mcv2• 4 years ago

I think that's about as successful in war as it is in software projects, except many of those bodies will end up dead. If there's one thing that the Russian invasion shows, it's the massive difference that morale makes. But also planning, coordination, logistics. You need to have soldiers who know what they're doing.

Isinlor• 4 years ago

Not always, Russia lost war in 1920 with Poland. Russia was trying to give military support to communist movements in Europe going across Poland. While Poland was trying to restore lands occupied by Russia in partitions of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1772-1795 that lead to Poland not existing for 123 years.

Russia lost that war and had to settle borders with Poland in the Treaty of Riga.

_kbh_7• 4 years ago

Botched indeed, the visual losses for Russia alone are staggering. Give it another couple more weeks with losses like they have no now in their tank force alone and they will have trouble running any sort of armour battalions.

Heres a list of Russias visually confirmed losses, the real numbers are likely much higher.

https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-docum...

sharken2• 4 years ago

Another point is that Ukraine might now have enough weapons to destroy all Russian tanks, planes and helicopters operating in Ukraine.

But even though things look hopeful, there really is no countermove to Putin bombing every major Ukrainian city.

So it looks like a stalemate unless Putin successfully conquers Donbas, at which point he might negotiate some kind of peace.

But with heavy vehicles such as tanks starting to arrive for the Ukrainians, a quick resolution to the invasion seems a long way off.

ddaalluu2• 4 years ago

You know that Russian tanks are throwaway tanks. Low quality, cheap and fast production, built to abandon.

maratc6• 4 years ago

In the Winter War, there were about 70,000 total casualties for Finland and about 350,000 casualties for the Soviets, or roughly 1:5.

However, Finland lost 9% of its territory and had to relocate 12% of its population as a result of that war.

Losses is not everything that counts.

ekianjo• 4 years ago

the visual losses for Russia alone are staggering

You realize you are also being fed Propaganda?

BaRRaKID• 4 years ago

An interesting thing in those numbers is that Ukraine captured more Russian vehicles than the ones that they lost. So Russian is in a way making the Ukrainian army bigger.

yakak4• 4 years ago

The west has now had time to create a pipeline, so as long as Ukraine doesn't have to accept a ceasefire it can keep all of Russias troops in a hopeless defense of whatever part of the east they can cover. But at least they won't need as much fuel, right?

The Russians should be more concerned that the longer this goes on the more handheld weapons are going to stockpile in Ukraine. What portion will end up traded or given to groups that want a rematch in Syria, Belarus, Chechnya, ..., even if the Ukraine doesn't decide a policy of destabilizing Russia is the easiest road to short term security?

JeremyNT• 4 years ago

Let's see how well "botched war" does in the coming weeks and months. There is a big, as in enormous, battle coming in Eastern Ukraine and if the Russian encirclement is successful, there will be very little between Kiev and Russia.

I don't suppose there's ever been any doubt that Russia can defeat Ukraine. The numerical superiority makes a Russian "defeat" essentially impossible.

That still leaves plenty of ways to "botch" the war, even in "victory." Russia is doing this both by wasting resources in poorly planned attacks and by incurring collateral damage amongst the civilian population. They're also botching the "PR" aspects of the war.

All of this is going to make the ongoing occupation/subjugation of the Ukrainian population much more challenging than it needed to be for them, so it makes sense that heads would need to roll.

tim3336• 4 years ago

Depends how you define defeat. They could easily end up in an Afghanistan situation and have to withdraw after a while.

_ph_2• 4 years ago

Unless Russia can overwhelm the Ukraine defenses in one massive battle, victory is all but assured. They failed to do so in the first attack and now the west is pouring ressources into the Ukraine. As long as the west is willing to do so, the Ukraine might actually have a better supply perspective, not counting even the embargo cutting Russia off a lot of supplies.

After all, that Russia managed to defend itself against the Germans in WW2 had a lot to do with the supplies it got from the US.

sliken4• 4 years ago

The west feared the Russia military and generally considered them the #2 military on the planet. Joke I've heard lately is that Dec 2021: Russia had the #2 military on the planet. April 2022: Russia has the #2 military in the Ukraine.

It also seems that Russia underestimated the impact on NATO. Now multiple countries are increasing military spending, several countries are now looking to join NATO, and the supply of weapons to the Ukraine is substantial. The current gen anti-tank weapons are so good that even a few hours to a few days of training can allow a solder or two to take out a tank. Sure intelligence on where the tanks are is helpful, but the Ukraine citizens, foreign powers with satellites, and heavy use of drones have that handled. It's amusing to think of a 1-800-got-tank hotlines causing serious problems for Russia. Keep in mind the GDP of countries helping the Ukraine is on the order of $40T, and Russia is $1.5T. Sure Turkey, India, China, and others are receptive markets, it's unclear how many soldiers and weapons they are going to send, especially since they do not want to lose access to the $40T GDP worth of market.

So Russia's advantage in tanks has largely been offset by anti-tank weapons and attacking supply lines. As a result armored vehicles have been withdrawn from various cities. Russia also has a substantial advantage in artillery and missiles, but the reports I've seen who that they are close to burning through their inventory of usable equipment, in particular ammunition and missiles. Apparently quite a bit of equipment is out of order because of the lack of preventative maintenance and production isn't anywhere close to the current burn rate and inventories are dropping precipitously. Sanctions are hurting their ability to produce, the only tank factory in Russia went idle in March for lack of parts, not heard if that's been fixed.

I do think the pending attack in the East will be more difficult for the Ukraine. Shorter Russian supply lines, lessons learned on the Russian side, and heavier dependence on completely destroying cities before invading will make things harder for the Ukraine. But lack of training, calling in the reserves (which aren't trained like the a weekend a month/2 weeks a year reservists elsewhere), and lack of preventative maintenance aren't easily fixed.

Much will depend on how generous the west is with larger and more sophisticated systems like longer range missiles, better anti-air weapons, tanks, and artillery pieces. I'd say currently Russia is no way going to take over the Ukraine, and even just encroaching from the east to take over a few cities is far from certain.

It's looking like the invasion is likely to be one of the biggest blunders of the century. In particular Germany, Finland, and Sweden have made it a priority to increase military spending and provide a unified opposition of Russia. Collectively just those 3 countries have about 3x the GDP of Russia, before the sanctions. Keep in mind Russia can't go all in on the Ukraine, they have to defend various borders from countries they have taken land from, in particular Japan (which all alone has 3x the GDP of Russia) seems quite interested in taking some islands back.

I wouldn't want to be Russia right now.

FlyingCapybara• 4 years ago

Kiev is something like 100km from the belarussia border, Kharkiv (second biggest ukrainian city) is 20km from the russian border. We're still waiting for Russia victory. No "they just take care about the civilans", we all know it's a lie, they use artilery on civilians zones and commited insane war crimes during the last weeks. Kharkiv was a mess, russians got destroyed in this city, just take a look at any photos/videos from Kharkiv. Russian bodies and burned armors all over the place, it was a nightmare. Russia was supposed to be one of the best army on earth for the last 15 years, but they can't enter a city like Kharkiv, Ukraine being one of the poorest european country. Good luck with the "not a botched war" theory. It was supposed to be a less than a week operation, we are closer to a 2 month war. Russia is already economically on his knees, they need billions to stay in Ukraine and more sanctions are coming... All they can do is bassicaly blindly destroy cities with artilery and commits war crimes out of frustration until the money runs out. Russia will probably make ukrainians suffer a lot at least for too many weeks, but they won't win the war. Even China and India aren't going to fully support them, there are a lot of negative signs for Russia, like this one : https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20220316-live-un-security... Germany and Switzerland broke their neutrality traditions. Sweden and Finland were neutral since the WW2, now they are probably about to join NATO. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/finland-and-sw... Russia basicaly lost everything. Their economy was already stagnant for the last 8 years just with a few sanctions, I bet they'll have a lot of fun during the next 5/10 years. But they'll have Mariupol (after killing thousand of Mariupol's civilians) and some east countryside, good for them.

JoeyBananas• 4 years ago

firing 150 people does not amount to a "Stalinist purge"

AnimalMuppet• 4 years ago

Putin needs to be a bit careful here. Historically, when a dictator purges his security service, the survivors sometimes have doubts about their own futures. And the FSB is one of the few outfits that could orchestrate a coup against Putin, if they felt threatened.

Putin ‘purges’ 150 FSB agents in response to Russia’s botched war with Ukraine

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