- Senior FSB official Sergei Beseda has been transferred to prison after being placed under house arrest, an expert has said.
- Beseda is one of many senior security officials who were punished during the invasion of Ukraine.
- Putin is said to be purging the Kremlin after predictions of an easy victory did not come true.
A senior Russian foreign intelligence official has been sent to jail, an expert says, after President Vladimir Putin launched a purge of officials accused of failing in the hesitant invasion of Ukraine,
Andrei Soldatov, one of Russia’s top security service experts, tweeted on Friday that Sergei Beseda, head of the fifth service of the FSB intelligence agency, had been taken to Lefortovo prison, a notorious FSB prison in the outskirts of Moscow.
Beseda and his deputy were placed under house arrest in March, Soldatov previously said, as officials investigated whether moles buried themselves in Russian spy agencies and leaked intelligence about the Russian invasion and the planning behind it.
—Andrei Soldatov (@AndreiSoldatov) April 8, 2022
Among Beseda’s responsibilities were intelligence and political subversion in former Soviet states, such as Ukraine.
Analysts accuse Russia’s poor performance is partly explained by its inability to anticipate the strength of the resistance its forces would face in Ukraine.
Experts said Russia likely expected to receive support from inside Ukraine once it started attacking, which largely did not materialize.
The prison where he is held was in Soviet times used by the KGB, the precursor agency to the FSB, to hold political prisoners.
Beseda is not the only official to have faced Putin’s anger over the failed invasion of Ukraine.
Roman Gavrilov, the deputy head of Rosgvardia, Russia’s national guard, was fired in March after the force suffered heavy casualties in the first weeks of the invasion.
Analysts said the deployment of national guards, rather than combat-trained soldiers, was another sign that Russia did not expect strong resistance.
Former British military intelligence analyst Phillip Ingram told Insider in March that Putin’s punishment of senior officials was a way to send a message to commanders that further failures would not be tolerated.
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