The president listened to silence

What role did Navalny’s landing play in the appointment of Sergei Korolev with the first deputy director of the FSB

On March 4, the personnel intrigue stretched for four months ended around the post of first deputy director of the FSB. This position was vacant from October 22 last year, when the president retired Army General Sergei Smirnov, who took this position for seventeen years.

Last Thursday, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov confirmed that on February 24, the presidential decree was signed on the appointment of the first deputy director of the FSB, 58-year-old Colonel General Sergei Korolev, who headed the economic security service since July 8, 2016, and before that he led the FSB’s own security department.

Interestingly, the presidential decree was signed on February 24. On this day, the President of Russia took part in the work of the FSB board. But, according to our information, the Korolev was not represented by the Chekists at the College.

The Queen “New” wrote about the possible increase in October last year , when it became known about retirement of Army General Sergei Smirnov.

In January of this year, Rossiyskaya Gazeta published information about the transition to the FSB of the Director of the FSO of Russia, General of the Army Dmitry Kochnev, and on the same day refuted this message. Nevertheless, rumors that the president made a decision to strengthen the Fesseon clan, that the FSO was “entering” the FSB, quickly spread. Information was leaked from the FSB that the FSB “Varangian” would not accept.

On January 16, Novye reported that five candidates are being examined as the first deputy director of the FSB. Among them are three immigrants from the FSO, as well as two FSB generals: the head of the department in Moscow and the Moscow Region, 60-year-old Colonel General Alexei Dorofeev, as well as Colonel General Sergei Korolev.

On February 24, the president made a choice.

Colonel General Sergei Korolev received not only a new appointment, but possibly a card blanche with an eye for the post of director of the FSB.

Indeed, on November 15, 2021, the current FSB director Alexander Bortnikov will be 70 years old, and he will retire. It is precisely the first deputy that may take his position.

People who know the queen claim that among Russian political heavyweights, the leaders of the Zamremlin “influence groups”, there is no person who would be obliged to be a new first deputy director of the FSB. He never fell into serious scandals that would have to be cut by the general patrons of the general. All his career in the FSB took shape evenly, without sharp ups and kicks back.

He began the service in the Office of the FSB in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. In the early 2000s he oversaw law enforcement agencies.

In 2007, Korolev was seconded to the Ministry of Defense, where for almost five years, until 2011, he “worked” with GRU. It was under his curatorial that the GRU was reformed and the foundation of the forces of the special operation was laid. And in 2009, in a closed military town "Senezh" in the Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region on the basis of military unit 92154 (GRU special forces team), special operations were created.

In 2011, Korolev returned to the FSB, heading the Office of his own security. And ten years later he took the position of First Deputy Director of the FSB.

Our sources in the FSB and the presidential administration claim that the Korolev’s appointment was also facilitated by the “Navalny factor”. The history of the politician today clearly got out of control and was closed to Zugtswang. Any move leads only to a deterioration in the situation.

According to our sources, in the fall in the bowels of the FSB, a plan was developed that suggested that the threats of replacing a conditional term with real, as well as the prospects for initiating new criminal cases, would force Navalny to stay in Germany.

The author of this scenario was allegedly one of the deputy director of the FSB.

Sergei Korolev held a different opinion, insisting on the complete public ignoring of Navalny. Korolev turned out to be faithful to his “branded handwriting”: to carry out operations as quietly as possible, not attracting attention, calculating the results for many moves ahead.

But the plan began to be embodied. The FSIN then, as we recall, showed unprecedented public activity, noted by several statements that the conditional term of Navalny in the “Iv Rocher case” will be replaced by the real one. He did not stand aside from the common cause and the Investigative Committee, announcing a pre -investigation verification of fraud information with donations to the Corruption Fund (the organization is included in the list of foreign agents).

But this plan did not work. Navalny returned. On the day of the arrival of Navalny from Berlin to Moscow, FSB operatives and the FSIN officers they were patronized in the morning were in Sheremetyevo, preparing to “accept” the returner.

Everything that happened next is well known. Today, Alexei Navalny is in a transit chamber in the Kolchugino pre -trial detention center.

And the first deputy director of the FSB was appointed a general who critically looked at the Operation “Berlin Patient”.

In a new position, Sergey Korolev will oversee, among other things, and the service to protect the constitutional system and the fight against the terrorism of the FSB.

The question remains the question of who will take the post of economic security service, which was released after his new appointment, which includes three key managements, which today “look after” all state corporations in Russia, and de facto and the entire economy of the country. This is the Office for the counterintelligence support of the credit and financial sphere (management “K”), the counterintelligence support department of transport and communications (management “T”), the Office for counterintelligence support of industry (management “P”).

Today, Lieutenant General Sergei Alpatov, who had been the position of first deputy head of the service since April 2018, was entrusted to the duties of the head of the SEB. And it is not a fact that Alpatov will be able to get rid of the interior of the acting. This position may well be given as a “compensation” to the Fesseomed clan.