“Pathologically scared”: Putin’s ex-bodyguard described the state of the President of Russia

For more than ten years he was part of Vladimir Putin’s entourage, accompanied him on all trips. Gleb Karakulov, a former officer of the Federal Security Service (FSO), the Kremlin’s closest bodyguard, has agreed to tell his story to a Russian investigative outlet. Paranoid, cut off from the world… this Russian in exile portrays a beleaguered leader and a Russian society more than ever ideologized.

Before releasing his testimony, the Dossier Center, a Russian investigative agency based in London and funded by Russian oligarch and opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, carried out several checks to ascertain the authenticity of Karakulov’s testimony. Thus, the site was able to get acquainted with his FGS identity document, as well as with a search notice issued by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs after his escape.

Gleb Karakulov until October last year worked in the presidential communications department of the Federal State Educational Standard. He was responsible for setting up secure communications networks for the President and Prime Minister of Russia during their travels. On October 15, 2022, with the war in Ukraine lasting over half a year, he took advantage of a business trip to Astana, Kazakhstan to abandon his colleagues and jumped on a plane bound for Istanbul, Turkey.

In his more than an hour story, Karakulov dismisses rumors of Putin suffering from an incurable disease. “Probably, he is in better health than many of his peers,” says the ex-captain of the Federal State Educational Standard, claiming that in 13 years of service, only one or two trips of the head of the Russian state were postponed due to health problems. The officer in exile, on the other hand, portrays the master of the Kremlin, constantly on the alert, even completely paranoid, constantly surrounded by important security forces. Karakulov describes him as “pathologically terrified at the thought of someone trying to kill him,” saying, for example, that he was tasked with securing the bunker’s communications network during a trip to Kazakhstan due to Putin’s fears of bombing. The special service of the Federal State Service even checks the nutrition of the president.

In 2021, Vladimir Putin would give up the idea of ​​flying and travel only by train. The column in the gray-red tones of the Russian national trains will remain incognito. “Whenever he travels, he always takes a phone box with him. A cube with a height of about 2.5 m, which contains a workplace and a secure phone,” says Karakulov.

According to Lucas Aubin, director of research at IRIS, the Russian president’s fears are justified. “Russia is a country of three revolutions (1905, 1917 and 1991), and the very nature of the Putin regime is fragile. This is not a dynasty, it has no heirs, which means there are many applicants,” recalls the author of Geopolitics of Russia. The attack on pro-Russian blogger Maxim Fomin last Sunday is also proof that there is an opposition in Russia capable of violent action against the Kremlin and its supporters.

“He lives in an information vacuum”

According to Karakulov, after the pandemic, Vladimir Putin’s psychosis has intensified. From 2021, dignitaries who request a face-to-face meeting with their leader must observe a two-week quarantine. And it’s very bad if everyone around is vaccinated and forced to check themselves several times a day. So Covid has largely changed the Russian president’s lifestyle, according to the ex-officer, who speaks of “two different Putins” before and after the pandemic. Anyone who never uses the Internet or a mobile phone receives information only from others or from special services.

“He lives in an information vacuum,” in the words of the ex-captain. “A sane person in the 21st century who objectively looks at everything that happens in the world (…) would not allow a war in Ukraine,” the latter believes. And add: “I consider him a war criminal.”

During this river interview, the exiled Russian also recalls his compatriots and former colleagues, whom he portrays as completely under the influence of Kremlin propaganda, including his own mother, with whom he had no contact after his defection. He finally considers himself grateful to his profession, without which he, too, would probably be a supporter of Z, like all those who believe in Russian television.

Extremely rare testimonies like those of Gleb Karakulov are today the only sources of information emanating from Russia, where brutal repression prevents journalists from doing their jobs. Last week, Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist and Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, was arrested on suspicion of espionage, becoming the first Western reporter to be detained since the start of the war in Ukraine.