TWO WEEKS after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Sergei Beseda’s mobile phone went dead. Mr Beseda, a general in the FSB, Russia’s main security agency, had been responsible for informing Vladimir Putin about internal dynamics in Ukraine. He was one of the bosses of the FSB’s Fifth Service, set up in the 1990s to spy on former Soviet republics. His information led to Mr Putin’s mistaken expectation that Ukraine would crumble.

When Ukraine instead fought Russia to a standstill, reports circulated that Mr Beseda had been arrested. Yet on March 24th the 70-year-old spy chief, now an adviser to the head of the FSB, sat in a hotel conference room in Saudi Arabia opposite Michael Waltz, America’s national security adviser, negotiating a possible ceasefire.

The security services’ prominence in the negotiations carries two messages, argues Andrei Soldatov, an intelligence expert living in exile. One is that Mr Putin sees the negotiations as a stage in his military operation rather than a path to ending the war. The other is that the spooks have been rehabilitated: the disastrous invasion is now presented as a success.

Those doing the fighting may disagree. Russia’s army has made almost no progress in two years. At least 200,000 soldiers are dead and 600,000 wounded, says Britain’s defence ministry. Yet the army must confront not just Ukrainian forces, but its own country’s security services. The FSB’s military counter-intelligence force, heir to Stalin’s infamous SMERSH, is the largest and fastest-growing directorate, says Mr Soldatov. Its job is to watch the armed forces, curb the influence of popular generals and prevent political self-organisation. The scale of purges evokes the Soviet era.

Many countries’ armed forces have strained relations with their spy agencies, but in Russia they can be deadly. Mr Putin mistrusts his army, particularly given its thinly veiled resentment at the start of the war. A few days before the invasion Leonid Ivashov, a retired general often used by the general staff to voice its opinions, warned that the use of force against Ukraine would be a disaster. As the blitzkrieg failed, Russia’s main journal of military theory implicitly blamed the FSB. Soldiers did not understand its goals or their roles. “Instead of flowers…the rear columns of our troops were met with civilian resistance,” it wrote.

To spur the army, Mr Putin let Evgeny Prigozhin (then boss of Wagner, a state-backed mercenary group) criticise Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s top commander, and Sergei Shoigu, then the defence minister. But Prigozhin led a mutiny in July 2023 that enjoyed sympathy among some senior officers. The army neither joined nor did much to stop it. After Prigozhin was placated (later dying in a plane crash), several generals disappeared from view. Ivan Popov, a popular commander who criticised the war’s conduct, was demoted.

Most importantly, the media resources that Prigozhin used for independent criticism have been brought under control. Telegram, one of Russia’s biggest social-media platforms, hosts dozens of voyenkory, or independent war bloggers, with an estimated cumulative audience of 13m. They often diverge from state-directed television propaganda. Igor Strelkov, a war blogger who openly criticised Mr Putin, was arrested after Prigozhin’s mutiny. Others have muted their dissent.

Some months later, the FSB began purging the army and defence ministry. Mr Shoigu, a close ally of Mr Putin, was moved to a different post. Three of his former deputies and about 30 staff were arrested. The aim, says Mikhail Komin of the Centre for European Policy Analysis, headquartered in Washington, was both to redistribute cashflows associated with the ministry and to dismantle Mr Shoigu’s “clan” of connections in government. His replacement, Andrey Belousov, belongs to no clan. A month after his appointment he met war bloggers, encouraging them to direct their concerns to him. He was allowed to choose only one of his deputies, says Mr Komin; the other two seem to have been picked by Mr Putin. One is Mr Putin’s niece.

Three generals have also been arrested, including Vadim Shamarin, deputy head of the general staff, and Mr Popov. The latter recently wrote an open letter to Mr Putin, asking to be transferred back to the front. “I never asked questions, but blindly and without thinking followed the path that was determined by sacred duty, oath, orders and your decrees,” he wrote. The Kremlin confirmed that Mr Putin has received the letter. He has yet to respond. ■

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