Chuck DarwinWe have identified the man behind the curtain as Lt. Gen. #Dmitry #Minaev
and can now reveal a trove of fresh details about the unit that he runs:
the Department for Counterintelligence Operations.
Known as #DKRO, it is at the very core of Putin’s opaque wartime regime.
The story of how it got there reveals much about how Russia’s autocratic system became entangled in a broiling conflict with the West.
Among our findings:
DKRO has played an enormous and unreported role in plunging Russia into its biggest wave of repression since the demise of Joseph Stalin,
including a purge of the Defense Ministry after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine faltered.
The department was ordered to secure the release from Germany of Vadim Krasikov,
a Russian hit man convicted in the 2019 assassination of a Putin enemy in a Berlin park.
DKRO then accelerated a campaign of arresting American citizens on Russian soil, including basketball star Brittney Griner.
DKRO used former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan and me as trade bait to secure the release of Krasikov.
Among DKRO’s other missions was to harass and surveil Western diplomats in Russia,
even pressuring students in the U.S. Embassy high school to spy on their classmates.
Though it numbers only about 2,000 officers, according to U.S. and European officials,
DKRO is the Kremlin’s most elite security force.
It wields the power to compel hundreds of thousands of personnel across Russia into surveilling, intimidating,
or arresting foreigners and the Russians it suspects of working with them.
DKRO officers are generously paid, even by the standards of Russia’s powerful and sprawling Federal Security Service, or FSB, of which it is part.
They enjoy bonuses for successful operations and access to low-cost mortgages,
even the best time slots at Russia’s beachside resorts.
Not a single DKRO officer is known to have defected to the West, according to U.S. and European officials.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/tracking-putin-s-most-feared-secret-agency-from-inside-a-russian-prison-and-beyond/ar-AA1vLYdS
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