Less than 24 hours after Putin’s party United Russia’s crushing election win, a source from within the Federal Security Services has warned the Russian president plans to create a new “State Security Ministry” in the lead up to the 2018 presidential election.
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The new ministry, building upon the Federal Security Service (FSB), will also deal with security in all law enforcement and security institutions, also taking over the personal guard of top public officials, the report suggests. In September the Federal Security Service detained the deputy head of the Interior Ministry’s department for economic security on suspicion of receiving a large bribe. The MGB will nearly exactly replicate the functions of the old KGB, the powerful state security agency in the former Soviet Union.
If the information is confirmed, the new superministry will also incorporate the Federal Protective Service of Russian Federation, which has the aforementione functions, and the foreign intelligence service, SVR. The country’s investigative bodies in charge of overseeing political trials will reportedly see most of their power transferred to the MGB.
Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Monday that he could not immediately comment on the Kommersant report.
The reform in question is supposed to be carried through before the presidential elections in 2018. But the chief obstacles now were finding the budget to afford the reforms, which would require huge redundancy payments, as well the need to pass laws authorizing them, the sources said.
During the Soviet era, Putin was himself a KGB officer stationed in the former East Germany and in his hometown of St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad).
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The KGB, or the “Committee for State Security”, was disbanded in 1991 after the Soviet Union fell, and replaced by the FSB, a greatly reduced body with numerous KGB’s responsibilities dispersed among different agencies. The suggestion that the Kremlin is planning to restore it, nearly in name, will prompt alarm among some that Putin is preparing to re-establish the core architecture of the Soviet totalitarian state.
