‘Russian elite’ plot to poison Putin and have chosen successor, haunts claim – World News

A brief from the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Defense Ministry of Ukraine states that FSB Director Oleksandr Bortnikov will succeed Vladimir Putin

Kremlin insiders plan to eliminate Vladimir Putin by poisoning him, a Ukrainian intelligence agency claims.

According to the Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, a “group of influential” members of the “Russian elite” have hatched a plan aimed at overthrowing the president.

The goal of this group is to remove Putin from power as quickly as possible and restore economic ties with the West.

According to the intelligence letter, powerful insiders are dismayed at the impact of the war and subsequent sanctions on the Russian economy.

The Ukrainian secret service claims that FSB director Oleksandr Bortnikov has already been appointed as Putin’s successor.

“It is known that Bortnikov and some other influential representatives of the Russian elite are considering various options to remove Putin from power,” the Chief Directorate of Intelligence said.

“In particular, poisoning, sudden illnesses or other ‘coincidences’ cannot be ruled out.”

The agency suggested that the losses suffered by Chechen forces in the north of the country may have influenced the alleged plot.

This weekend, Ukraine said part of the notorious Chechen fighter squadron had been sent back to Russia after many of its troops were killed.

The suggestion that Bortnikov should be the man to replace Putin comes as a surprise given how the two men have worked their way through Russian society together.

They both served with the KGB in Leningrad before Bortnikov took over the renamed security agency.

Bortnikov’s FSB is both the brain and heart of the Putin regime, a “state within a state,” according to an in-depth investigation examination through the dossier center.

At the start of the conflict, the normally camera-shy Bortnikov delivered the goods for Putin when he claimed that two of his border guards had captured a Ukrainian military saboteur alive on Russian soil.

He said the saboteur had malicious intentions against the state before his people took them out.

While the claims were anticipated and then refuted by the West, they served as a means of justifying war within Russia.

It is unclear whether the claims of the Ukrainian secret service are true or are a means of sowing divisions in the top echelons of the Kremlin.

In the days following Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Russians risked arrest to demonstrate their opposition to the war.

The brutal police crackdown on demonstrations appears to have crushed any early roots of a popular uprising, leading those hoping for internal collapse in Russia to wonder if its elites might overthrow Putin.

The main obstacle to this seems to be the power structure within the Kremlin that Putin has painstakingly built over the past two decades.

The 69-year-old has been careful to include other senior officials in the decision to invade Ukraine, potentially uniting his inner circle with fears of being dragged before an international court.

According to reports in expon Putin’s People, the Russian leader is actively encouraging those he has chosen to run industries to skim off some cream – by insinuating him and assuring them that they are unable to step down from the position.

Adam Casey, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan’s Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies, believes Putin is coup-proof.

“He has spent a lot of time and effort designing the Russian security apparatus to be relatively invulnerable to coups,” he told Business Insider.

The FSB is a “fairly effective” form of coup prevention, Casey said, because military officials fear being monitored and killed.