The head of the Kremlin is “shut off from the world,” according to a former officer in Vladimir Putin‘s elite personal security team.
After being deployed to Kazakhstan, Gleb Karakulov, 35, broke ranks and defected, making him a wanted man now.
He provided hints about Putin’s mysterious personal life in an interview with the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative organization supported by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent member of the Russian opposition.
“Our president has turned into a war criminal,” he declared.
It is time to put an end to this battle and to speak up.
Karakulov was a captain in Russia’s secretive Federal Protective Service (FSO) tasked with setting up secure communications for the country’s president and prime minister.
In 13 years of service, he says he never saw Putin use a mobile phone.
The Kremlin leader also never requested internet access, suggesting he rarely reads non media or reports from outside Russia.
‘Our president is cut off from the world, he lives in an informational vacuum,’ Karakulov said.
‘He is pathologically afraid for his life. He has surrounded himself with an impenetrable barrier of quarantine and a lack of any information from the internet.’
There have been widespread rumours as to the state of Putin’s health, with many pointing out potential symptoms of serious illness.
The way the Kremlin leader walks, talks and even sits have all been analysed in detail.
But Karakulov said he has taken more than 180 trips with the Russian president, and contrary to widespread speculation, Putin appears to be in good health.
He has only cancelled a few trips due to illness and has annual medical checkups, he said.
It was Karakulov’s job to set up secure communications at the hospital when Putin checked in.
Many had speculated that the Russian ruler’s reluctance to ease the offensive in Ukraine was due to his poor health.
But Karakulov says it isn’t due to his physical health, but his mental state.
‘I understand that he’s simply afraid,’ he said.
Putin’s paranoia has reportedly deepened since the war broke out, and he opts to travel by a ‘nondescript train car’ rather than a plane.
The Kremlin leader has set up identical offices in multiple locations, with matching details down to the desk and wall hangings, and official reports sometimes say he’s one place when he is actually in another, according to Karakulov and prior reporting by a Russian media outlet.
Karakulov’s interview with the Dossier Center gives the world vital insight into the mind of Putin.
The rare defection of a Russian insider raises questions about how deep public support for the war in Ukraine actually runs in Russia.
Karakulov wasn’t the only one from the FSO who wanted out.
An engineer at a regional FSO center in Siberia tried to flee to Kazakhstan in September, shortly after Russia’s draft took effect.
But authorities there sent him back to Russia, where he was sentenced to six -and-a-half years in a penal colony.
Boris Bondarev, a career diplomat in Geneva who quit in May and denounced the war, said there are plenty of Russians who quietly oppose the war but don’t dare speak out, for fear of losing their livelihoods.
A few Foreign Ministry colleagues quit after he did but didn’t go public, he said. He added that, like him, they’re having trouble finding work.
Bondarev is now living as a political refugee on a government allowance in Switzerland, with security constraints he’d rather leave ‘deliberately ambiguous.’
But he doesn’t have regrets.
‘You must do what your what your conscience tells you to do,’ he said.