Ex-Putin protection officer who fled Russia describes president as paranoid ‘war criminal’ fearful of assassination
A former protection officer for Russian President Vladimir Putin has detailed how he defected to try to help stop the war on Ukraine being waged by an increasingly paranoid “war criminal.”
“Our president has become a war criminal,” warned Gleb Karakulov, who had been a communications expert for Putin’s secretive elite personal security team, the Federal Protective Service, or FSO.
“It is time to end this war and stop being silent.”
From a secret hiding spot, Karakulov said he felt compelled to raise the alarm even though his mother fears his defection made him a “foreign agent” — and a once-close colleague called him a “scumbag.”
“Patriotism is when you love your country,” said Karakulov, who is listed as a wanted man in the Russian Interior Ministry’s public database of criminal suspects.
“In this case, our homeland needs to be saved, because something crazy and terrible is happening in our country. We need to fix this.”
While suggesting Putin’s health was better than a barrage of warnings would suggest, Karakulov detailed an ever-increasing paranoia in the daily actions of the leader who he suggests fears assassination plots.
The warmongering leader also spends most of his time living in a bunker at the Russian Embassy in Kazakhstan outfitted with a secure communications line, he said.
Karakulov said he has taken more than 180 trips with the Russian president, nearly always in a special armored train rather than a plane because of paranoia about flights getting tracked.
“In all my service, I have never seen him with a mobile phone,” Karakulov said of Putin’s fears that he could also be tracked and intercepted.
“All the information he receives is only from people close to him. That is, he lives in a kind of information vacuum.”
An official with a security background from a NATO country said a defection like Karakulov’s “has a very great level of interest.”
“That would be seen as a very serious blow to the president himself because he is extremely keen on his security, and his security is compromised,” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
“That’s something that [Putin] would be very unhappy about — particularly if the compromise is to do with communications, upon which a great deal relies.”
Karakulov said he finally fled in October with his wife and young daughter, despite fearing for their safety. A key motivation was seeing his child being brainwashed in preschool, where children were doing patriotic salutes and being told about bombs.
“This is not the future I would like for my child,” he said.
The Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment. Neither did Karakulov’s father or brother.
With Post wires
