FSB (secret service)

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Federalnaja sluschba besopasnosti Rossijskoi Federazii (FSB)
Federal Service for Security of the Russian Federation

FSB coat of arms

founding April 3, 1995
country Flag of Russia.svg Russian Federation
Task of the authority Domestic intelligence
Supervisory authority Ministry of Interior of the Russian Federation
Emerged from KGB
director Alexander Bortnikov
Field Office Lubyanka , Moscow
budget secret
Employee around 350,000 employees, including around 200,000 border troops
Subordinate special unit Emblem of the Directorate A.svg Alfa Wympel
Emblem of the Directorate V.svg
Website www.fsb.ru
FSB headquarters
Alpha group of the FSB

The FSB is the domestic intelligence agency of the Russian Federation . The Russian name Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации F ederalnaja s luschba b esopasnosti Rossijskoi Federazii (ФСБ) means "Federal Service for Security of the Russian Federation".

With the exception of foreign espionage and the Federal Protection Service , the FSB is responsible for the entire infrastructure of the former KGB (Committee for State Security). Its tasks mainly extend to state security , domestic espionage and border service . FSB is headquartered in Moscow .

history

The FSB is practically the successor to the KGB, with the restriction on domestic tasks. While the KGB was a Soviet secret service and extended to the entire Soviet Union, the FSB only operates in the Russian Federation.

MSB - Inter-Republican Security Service

On 28 November 1991 signed Mikhail Gorbachev in his capacity as president of the Soviet Union the decree "On Approval of the temporary location in the Inter-republican Security Service - MSB" ( Об утверждении Временного положения о Межреспубликанской службе безопасности - МСБ ).

MB - Ministry of Security

On December 19, 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed an order establishing the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation - MB ( Министерство безопасности Российской Федерации - МБ ). The correct name in the long form is "Ministry of Security and Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation" - MBWD ( Министерство безопасности и внутренних дел РФ - МБВД ).

On January 14, 1992, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation annulled this order for inconsistent with the Russian Constitution. On January 24th, the directive was finally issued and came into force.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, Yeltsin founded its own Russian secret service, which inherited the existing Soviet secret service KGB. In the months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he fought on the Russian side against Gorbachev, who represented the interests of the Soviet Union and was ultimately defeated. Yeltsin had already won Russia's first presidential election in June 1991.

FSK - Federal Counter-Enlightenment Service

On December 21, 1993, Yeltsin signed the order for the dissolution of the Ministry of Security (MB) and the creation of the Federal Counter-Enlightenment Service ( Федеральна служба контрразведки - ФСК ) - FSK. The service worked with this designation from 1993 to 1995 as the successor to the MB. In August 1994, BND leader Bernd Schmidbauer and the then FSK boss Sergei Stepaschin agreed to work together. In 1996 the FSK wrote to the German Ministry of Justice asking for legal assistance in connection with the Munich plutonium smuggling of August 1994. The FSK admitted that the seized 363 grams of plutonium from Obninsk , the oldest nuclear power plant in the world (since 1954), 80 kilometers south-west came from Moscow.

FSB - Federal Security Service

On April 3, 1995, Yeltsin signed the "Law on the Organs of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation" ( Закон об органах Федеральной службы безопасности в Российской в ​​РоссийскойBBидер ) - FS . The FSB thus became the successor to the "counter-espionage service" FSK.

The law describes the three main tasks of the FSB:

The frequent renaming of the secret services has a long tradition in Russia since 1918 and was associated with the constant restructuring of the organizational structures.

At the end of December 2007, the FSB reported that the British foreign intelligence service, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), had recruited the former Russian secret service agent Vyacheslav Sharkov and commissioned him with the procurement of secret data. However, in June 2007, Sharkov volunteered for the FSB and exposed four other MI6 agents.

In July 2010, Russian President Dmitri Anatolyevich Medvedev signed a law expanding the mandate of the FSB. A suspicion of a possible crime is enough for the FSB to investigate citizens. Ella Pamfilova government's human rights commissioner resigned the day after the law came into force. She had asked Medvedev not to expand the rights of the FSB.

URPO

Since 1996 there has been a special department in the FSB called Uprawlenije Rasrabotki Prestupnych Organizazi (URPO), in German: Directorate for the Infiltration of Criminal Organizations. The task of this special department is to penetrate criminal structures and identify the leading figures. The department has a staff of around 150.

CRACK

The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) is considered the think tank of the FSB. Since 2009 it has been under the administration of the Russian President .

"FSBization" of the state

Like the KGB during the Soviet era, the FSB now occupies a central position among state organs. Especially since Putin took office as president, the FSB and other intelligence services have regained more weight. Putin appointed his longtime confidante Nikolai Platonowitsch Patrushev as head of the FSB and subordinated him directly to the president. The FSB and its influence in the state have been continuously expanded through various reforms. For example, the border troops and the Federal Agency for Government Communication and Information (FAPSI) have largely been integrated into the FSB. In the period that followed, Putin placed at least 150 former KGB and FSB cadres in important political and economic areas. These include the Russian Presidential Administration , the federal customs services, which are considered a lucrative source of income, the Security Council and other government posts. The Deputy Secretary of the Standing Committee of the Russian-Belarusian Union , the Director General of the Eurasian Economic Community (until 2015) and the Permanent Representative of Russia to NATO also have ties to the FSB . FSB agents are also represented in the private sector, notably often on the boards of gas and oil companies such as Gazprom , Rosneft , Slavneft, Sibur , Itera and Nowatek . Important private oil companies such as Yukos and Sibneft were taken over by the state-owned companies Rosneft and Gazprom under Putin's presidency and are thus also under the influence of the FSB. With regard to Russia, one no longer speaks only of “directed democracy”, but rather of “directed capitalism”. It can be assumed that the representatives of the Russian intelligence services and other state organs pursue not only state, but above all material self-interests. In the meantime, the FSB is so closely intertwined with various areas of life that the question arises as to how much state surveillance and control are associated with this strong position. In August 2006, the Russian government unconstitutionally decreed that the FSB and the Ministry of the Interior should have unlimited access to telecommunications company databases . The state organs can see who is on the phone with whom, for how long and where, and thus gain a considerable insight into the privacy of Russian citizens.

Ex-officer

The highest-ranking renegade during the Putin era is a former FSB colonel who was counted among the top 50 of the apparatus and who particularly pointed out to German journalists that there was an extensive smuggling of Chechen spies who appeared as asylum seekers in Germany with false papers.

Head of the FSB

Current head of the FSB Alexander Bortnikow 2010

See also

Web links

Commons : FSB (Secret Service)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sakwa, Richard. Russian Politics and Society (4th ed.), P. 98.
  2. ↑ Jürgen Marks: PLUTONIUM. Kind regards from Moscow . In: Focus . tape 1996 , no. 7 ( focus.de [accessed on February 25, 2014]).
  3. ↑ Tagesschau: More power for Russia's domestic intelligence service ( Memento from July 30, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ zeit.de: Critical Kremlin representative Ella Pamfilowa resigns (accessed July 31, 2010).
  5. ↑ Moscow establishes another “workshop for information warfare” in the Crimea, RFERL , April 16, 2015.
  6. ^ Robert Coalson: New Greek Government Has Deep, Long-Standing Ties With Russian 'Fascist' Dugin . In: Rferl.org ( RFE / RL ) . January 28, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2015.
  7. ^ Swiss Service for Analysis and Prevention: Organized Crime and Intelligence Service from the CIS , June 2007, pp. 2–3; Russian translation under: Сотрудничество ФСБ и ОПГ. Аналитический отчет контрразведки Швейцарии , from May 16, 2016, accessed on May 22, 2020.
  8. ↑ https://www.zdf.de/dokumentation/zdfzoom/zdfzoom-putins-kalter-krieg-100.html