The Federal Security Service has taken control of all spheres of Russian society, and repression is spreading from political opponents to billionaires, while support for the war in Ukraine hits record lows.
A growing number of Russian elites are increasingly concerned about the unchecked expansion of the Federal Security Service (FSB), which President Vladimir Putin is increasingly turning to in an effort to maintain power amid growing discontent over the war in Ukraine. According to sources close to the Kremlin who requested anonymity, Putin has shifted away from maintaining a balance between hardliners and more moderate officials and now consistently relies on advocates of stricter control.
Senior officials such as Sergei Kiriyenko, Putin's powerful domestic policy chief, are losing influence. Kiriyenko has recently been criticized for the failure of Russian political operations in Armenia, Moldova, and Hungary, according to assessments by people close to the Kremlin and the Russian government.
Political analyst Andrei Kolesnikov from Moscow vividly described the current situation: "The FSB has become a company that runs the country." He added that "the political administration, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the financial-economic bloc have been reduced to mere technical staff that implement decisions made from the perspective of the secret services."
Particularly notable is the FSB's Second Service, responsible for counter-terrorism and protecting the political order. According to three sources, it has almost complete freedom to conduct investigations against anyone, with very little or no accountability. It is this service that is behind the attempt to charge billionaire and Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov with terrorism, as part of efforts to restrict the app. Durov, who has lived outside Russia for years, dismissed the accusation on his Telegram channel, stating that Russia has declared him a terrorist "for refusing its demands for mass surveillance and censorship."
Putin is increasingly relying on the FSB at a time when the consequences of the war are becoming more visible to ordinary citizens. Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries, defense industry factories, and logistics depots reach deep inside Russia, undermining the Kremlin's claims of control in the fifth year of the conflict. According to data from the Moscow-based Levada Center, the share of Russians who believe the invasion is progressing successfully fell to 50 percent in July, a drop of 19 percentage points from a year earlier.
The bomb attack in central Moscow last weekend and the car bombing of an FSB operative in Mariupol likely only strengthened the FSB's arguments in favor of stricter security measures, leaving little room for other factions within the Kremlin to oppose them, despite concerns that this could further weaken support for the president.
A wave of repression is affecting all layers of society. Ilya Remeslo, a former pro-Kremlin blogger who turned against Putin, was sent to a psychiatric facility after being arrested in St. Petersburg on charges of spreading "fake news" about the military, state news agency TASS reported on July 26. Anti-war politician Boris Nadezhdin, who was not allowed to run in the 2024 presidential election, was convicted of "extremism" and recently fled to France after being declared a "foreign agent."
The FSB's Second Service has also initiated proceedings against dozens of physicists and researchers in the aerospace and space technology fields on charges of "treason" for participating in international symposiums that were once approved by the state itself. The agency also maintains unofficial lists of artists, musicians, and directors deemed insufficiently loyal to the homeland.
On Tuesday, Putin signed a new regulation providing for penalties for those who opposed the war and left Russia, who have been convicted in absentia. Their assets in Russia will be frozen, they will be banned from using state and banking services via the internet, and they will not be able to renew their passports abroad.
The FSB's Second Service has a long history of operations against Putin's most prominent opponents. The United States imposed sanctions on its chief, Lieutenant General Alexei Sedov (71), for the poisoning of Alexei Navalny in 2020, while the United Kingdom imposed similar measures for the poisoning of opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza. The agency also surveilled former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov before his murder in 2015 on a bridge near the Kremlin.
Sedov, who has had direct access to Putin since his appointment in 2006, began his KGB career in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. Earlier this year, he was among the main advocates of restricting mobile internet for security reasons, which caused great public discontent.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in a commentary published on July 27 that Russian elites are increasingly concerned about the system's inability to respond to the growing number of war-related problems. "The fundamental problem is the feeling that the Russian leadership has lost touch with reality," Stanovaya said, adding: "Putin's obsession with subjugating Ukraine has made effective governance of the country much more difficult."
The atmosphere of repression is spreading among both elites and the Russian middle class. Sociologist and researcher at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre, Ela Panejah, summed it up: "People are all scared, because no one knows who will be next."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not respond to a request for comment on these allegations.
