Less than 24 hours after an election saw Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party increase its hold over the lower house of Russian parliament, plans have surfaced for a new, consolidated intelligence service reminiscent of the KGB.
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The ministry will absorb the Federal Security Service (FSB) and several smaller agencies, Kommersant reports, citing unnamed security agency sources.
The MGB would consolidate both domestic and foreign intelligence operations as well as giving officers authority to conduct criminal investigations.
Like the much-feared KGB, it would also oversee the prosecutions of Kremlin critics, a task now undertaken by the Investigative Committee, headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a former university classmate of President Putin.
Naryshkin is a long-standing Putin ally from the president’s hometown Saint Petersburg who Russian Federation media claims served as a KGB spy in the West.
The new agency will reportedly be called the “MGB”.
Both decrees, signed by President Putin, will be effective from October 5, the president’s press office said.
It was renamed the KGB after Stalin’s death, and disbanded in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, when its powers were distributed among a number of newly-created security services. The resurrection of the name MGB, as it was the acronym was once used to denote the state security service during the rule of former leader Josef Stalin.
The biggest party supporting Putin scored an overwhelming victory in national parliament elections, winning three-quarters of the seats, the Central Elections Commission reported Monday, the Daily Sabah reports.
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A win in 2018 would secure Putin’s power until at least 2024.
