A human rights group that works closely with Russian prisoners and investigates abuses by the security services has reportedly received a flood of calls from members of the same security services desperately trying to escape. Gulagu.net, founded by Vladimir Osechkin, reports that the last straw appears to have been the brutal video of a sledgehammer execution released by Russia’s private army last week – an extrajudicial killing that the Kremlin politely averted its eyes, while the Putin-connected businessman believed to be behind it is using it for his own PR campaign. “The sledgehammer retaliation and its cruelty [Wagner Group founder Yevgeny] Prigozhin, with Putin’s tacit consent, had an unexpected result: for the third day, there has been a steady flow of messages to the Gulagu.net hotline from employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the [Investigative Committee]the FSB and the [Federal Protective Service]the Federal Judicial Service, etc., who want to leave the ground of lawlessness and cruelty,” Gulagu.net reported. While rumblings of discontent among Russian security services have been reported throughout the war, frustrations have reportedly boiled over as Putin is increasingly seen as losing control. In less than two weeks, there has been Russia’s humiliating retreat from Kherson – the Ukrainian territory that Putin and so many of his mouthpieces had vowed would be part of Russia “forever”. Then came the video of the brutal execution by members of the Wagner Group, the same private army that, by all accounts, has been tasked with bringing victory to Putin by any means necessary. (Despite growing calls for an investigation into the execution, the Kremlin dismissed it as “none of our business,” leaving Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin to offer a series of fanciful explanations for the killing that were clearly intended to troll.) And then came the Russian-made missile that landed in Poland this week, killing two farmers there shortly after similar missiles launched from Russia decimated Ukrainian civilians in the latest bombardment. While Western officials have since rejected their claims that the Polish farmers were killed by a missile fired from Russia, the incident initially seemed likely to trigger an immediate conflict between the Russian military and NATO forces. And that reportedly left some in Russia’s security services so shaken that they were ready to remove Putin from power altogether. This is according to unconfirmed reports from the Telegram channel General SVR, an anonymous channel that claims to be run by a former member of the security services. “The incident with a missile that hit Poland on Tuesday almost became a prelude to the seizure of power in Russia,” the channel said on Thursday, claiming that senior security officials gathered immediately after the strike for “informal consultations”. “Knowing Putin’s penchant for raising the stakes through escalation, … this group of security officials quickly became convinced that in response to a Russian strike on a NATO country there could be both retaliation and an ultimatum.” So, according to the channel, they decided that “if the US leadership and neighboring countries show readiness for a tough response, then the best way out would be to remove the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from power and create a collective council. of security officials to ‘temporarily’ take control of the country into their own hands … blaming all the problems on either a seriously ill or a law-breaking president.” Noting that Putin has brought the tension “almost to the limit”, the channel warned: “This time, the critical situation turned out to be illusory and it made no sense for the security forces to take risks, but next time, and there will be a next time time, Putin may not have the chance.” While the panic over the missile incident has largely died down, the same cannot be said for Prigozhin’s growing influence in the war and his front-line role. A former member of the security services who fled the country told Deutsche Welle late last month that there were growing concerns within the federal agencies about the power given to certain figures in Putin’s inner circle. “The state doesn’t think about its people, it only thinks about itself and its close associates,” he said, describing them as “gangsters.” Perhaps in a sign of things to come, Putin on Thursday appeared to signal that he has no intention of listening to any of the more moderate figures who might warn him against escalation. Instead, he purged the Kremlin’s Human Rights Council of all experts who raised questions about the war and the public execution of defector Yevgeny Nuzhin, replacing them with a hardline war reporter and other Kremlin loyalists. According to RTVI, citing a source at the human rights council, the head of the council is unlikely to seek an investigation into the sledgehammer killing or become involved in any way, because he said that in times of war “anything can happen”.
