In an interview, an escaped officer from the Kremlin’s Presidential Guard talks regarding Vladimir Putin’s everyday life. He was “cut off from the world”. And a “war criminal”.
He was an officer in the Presidential Guard FSO and was therefore closer to the Russian President than almost anyone. Gleb Karakulov was responsible for the personal protection of Vladimir Putin, specifically he was responsible for smooth communication around the government, encrypted the communications of the highest state officials, provided them with intelligence information. Until he escaped last October.
“A criminal war broke out in February 2022,” the defector explains today. “I might not remain in the service of this President. I consider him a war criminal. Although I was not directly involved in the war, I was no longer able to carry out his criminal orders or remain in his service.”
These are blunt words that the former officer found in an interview with the Dossier Center – a platform of the exiled Russian opposition figure and ex-oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He is probably the highest-ranking defector to date who has opened up regarding the war once morest Ukraine and its driver.
He holds them responsible for “terrorism and genocide once morest the Ukrainian people”. Until 2020, the Russian President was still actively involved in public life and was on business trips. But then Corona came, Putin isolated himself from the world, and mostly held events online canceled most trips abroad He spent the last few years in an “information cocoon” and hardly ever left his residence.
“So his view of reality was distorted.” A “reasonable person of the 21st century” who has an idea of developments in the world and can at least anticipate them in the medium term “would not have allowed this war,” says Karakulov, and speaks of an “invasion of the territory of a sovereign state”.
“Putin is morbidly afraid for his life”
In addition, the Russian President was “morbidly afraid for his life,” said the officer who fled. Therefore, numerous safety precautions had to be observed:
To this day, anyone who comes into contact with him has to be in quarantine for two weeks – even if the meeting doesn’t last longer than 20 minutes. Anyone who works with him must be vaccinated and undergo PCR tests several times a day. “Everyone is a little at a loss as to why this is still the case,” admits Karakulov, who is probably worried regarding his health. However, Karakulov dispels rumors that the Russian President may be ill: “He is healthier than many people his age.”
The Russian ruler also uses neither a mobile phone nor the Internet, he gets information from his closest circle or from the Russian secret service reports. In addition to some official residences, he also has unofficial ones, his offices at different locations are all set up identically: “His offices, whether in St. Petersburg, Sochi or Nowo-Ogaryovo, are all the same.” He also fakes trips, organizes business trips, the he never competes. In this way he might mislead foreign secret services and prevent “every attempt on his life”.
“We’re being kept in the dark”
Karakulov said that while his former colleagues “revere Putin in every way,” he himself will be “unpatriotic” to his compatriots. Patriotism means loving your country. “And we have to save that. There is a terrible war going on here. And it needs to be stopped as soon as possible.”
Addressing the Russians directly, he says: “I hope that everything I just said only confirmed the misrepresentation of information in our country. We’re all kept in the dark. Only the comfortable truths are told. For years we have been indoctrinated with arbitrary choice of information sources and conformism. That was one of the reasons that led to this war.”
>>> To the interview with Gleb Karakulov
(Red.)
