A bitter new blame game has erupted in Vladimir Putin’s secret services over the bogus intelligence that led him to go to war.
It comes amid claims that the spymaster seen as responsible for telling him that Ukraine was ripe for invasion has not been arrested, as widely reported.
Col-General Sergei Beseda, 68, head of the 5th Service of the Federal Security Service (FSB), was said to have been detained either under house arrest or under pre-trial detention in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo jail.
Now, despite stark new evidence of the incompetent intelligence reaching Putin, a new account based on rare leaks says this is not true.
“Beseda is untouchable,” one source told IStories, a media outlet linked to Russia ’s top investigative journalists.
“People like him don’t get jailed.”
It is unclear if he is still in post or currently advising Putin but the report stated: "At the start of the war many media even reported Beseda and colleagues were arrested for the fact their information about Ukraine was false.
"But four sources said it is not true."
Despite this, there is open war inside the FSB over intelligence that led Putin to believe Russian troops would be welcomed in many Ukrainian regions.
"The level of professionalism there is worthless,” said a source quoted by IStories.
Beseda’s agents were “selling air” instead of providing hard and reliable data.
“They would over- or misinterpret information, sometimes they would make up things completely,” said a former FSB officer.
“The senior executives used to believe all of this nonsense.
“For instance, they would report that the regions of Ukraine did not have any real connection with the Kyiv government and would run towards Russia should they have a chance to do so.”
This led Putin to setting a target to take Kyiv in five days, and Mariupol in three, according to IStories.
In fact, Putin was forced to abort his plan to grab the capital, and has only gained control of a devastated and unrecognisable Mariupol after almost three months of fighting.
A servicing FSB staffer said of the 5th service: “It was full of people who had no clue how the job is done.
“Many people refused to join the department, it is something of a swamp really.”
A key problem was that the spies Putin relied on were gathering intelligence from discredited and fugitive members of the Ukrainian government overthrown in 2014.
These people had an axe to grind.
Another ex-FSB agent told journalists: “They would feed Beseda with their made-up fantasies to seem worthwhile and receive financial aid.
“They were also dreaming about returning to Ukraine.
“They would even plan out what positions they would take in the future. This way they adapted their stories to create a favourable picture.”
A member of a Russian special-purpose unit - referring to Putin - told IStories: "However funny it may sound, the decision about the war was taken by the most uninformed person that could possibly have taken it. The president.”
The report said that while Beseda may not have been arrested, there is a mood for recriminations.
“No-one hides that inside FSB that there are big questions over the work of the 5th service,” said the report.
“Moreover, many fellow FSB are thirsty for the blood of their colleagues from that service, and wait for criminal cases to start against them.”
Novaya Gazeta - an independent Russian investigative news outlet now in exile - wrote: “Putin relied upon the information provided by incompetent FSB officers when he planned his invasion into Ukraine.”
Other accounts, especially from leading security expert and journalist Andrei Soldatov, have insisted that Beseda was detained as part of a sweep up of dozens of FSB operatives seen as having given Putin dud data over Ukraine.
He was being held in Lefortovo under a pseudonym, it was claimed.
