Leaked emails from a whistleblower at Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), shared with Newsweek, reveal a civil war among President Vladimir Putin's closest allies as his invasion of Ukraine continues to falter.
The agent, dubbed the Wind of Change, writes regular dispatches to Russian dissident exile Vladimir Osechkin, revealing the anger and discontent inside the FSB over the war that began when Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24.
Osechkin is a Russian human rights activist who runs the anti-corruption website Gulagu.net.
The emails were shared in full with Newsweek by Igor Sushko, the executive director of the Wind of Change Research Group, a Washington-based non-profit organization. Sushko has been translating the correspondence from Russian to English since they began on March 4.
Previous FSB letters authored by the whistleblower, and published by Osechkin, have been analyzed by Christo Grozev, an expert on the FSB. He said he had shown the emails to two FSB officers who had "no doubt it was written by a colleague."
Dated November, the agent's latest emails detail inner turmoil and conflict within the Kremlin, predicting an "inevitable" civil war, and that Russia will soon "descend into the abyss of terror" as people grow increasingly tired of the war.
The whistleblower focuses on Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Putin ally and founder of the mercenary outfit the Wagner Group, and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.
Both Prigozhin and Kadyrov have...
FIRST ON FOX: A Mexican national who voted illegally in U.S. elections and falsely claimed to be a citizen has been convicted and could face removal under federal immigration law. The Department o...