Gleb Karakulov was an officer in President Vladimir Putin's secretive elite personal security service -- one of the few Russians to flee and go public who have rank, as well as knowledge of intimate details of Putin's life and potentially classified information.
On Oct. 14, a Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov boarded a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter. He switched off his phone to shut out the crescendo of urgent, enraged messages, said goodbye to his life in Russia and tried to calm his fast-beating heart.
Along with information on Putin, Karakulov's testimony offers an intimate view of one man's decision to defect -- without telling his own mother, who he said remains a strong Putin supporter. It raises critical questions about how deep the Russian public's acceptance of the war runs, and how Putin's opponents in the West and beyond might leverage any silent opposition.
The Dossier Center, a London-based investigative group funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, interviewed Karakulov multiple times and shared video and transcripts of more than six hours of those interviews with The Associated Press, as well as the Danish Broadcasting Corporation DR, Swedish Television SVT, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK.
"In all my service, I have never seen him with a mobile phone," he said. "All the information he receives is only from people close to him. That is, he lives in a kind of information vacuum." "The guys would talk about this, really laughing," he said. "I think that this is an attempt to confuse, first, intelligence, and second, so that there are no assassination attempts."Karakulov's defection was a surprising turn for a family steeped in patriotic military tradition.
"If this is from the budget, then the question is, `Is it not too much to spend this kind of money on one person?"' he said. "If it's not from the budget, then it's total corruption." As the war streamed in on the evening news, his parents seemed to savor the view from the front. He found it unbearable and asked his mother to turn off the TV. She refused.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Summer McIntosh joins elite group of world-record holdersMcIntosh smashed two senior world records and rewrote the Canadian and world junior record books in all five of her events at the Canadian swimming trials
Read more »
Private equity firm TPG to acquire majority stake in Elite from Thomson ReutersThomson Reuters will keep a minority stake and board representation in Elite and continue to support it with its legal information products, the companies said
Read more »
Finland's NATO membership triggered by Putin's invasion of Ukraine - StoltenbergHELSINKI/BRUSSELS — Finland formally joined NATO on Tuesday, its flag unfurling outside the military bloc’s Brussels headquarters, in a historic policy shift…
Read more »
Finland set to join NATO, in blow to PutinFinland is set to officially become a member of NATO later on Tuesday and take its place among the ranks of the world's biggest security alliance.
Read more »
Letters to the editor: ‘Alexander Ovechkin has the right to be a jerk.’ Hockey, politics and Vladimir Putin, plus other letters to the editor for April 4In today’s letters to the editor: Pierre Poilievre; foreign interference; the deficit; arms deals and Qatar; Rogers and Shaw; Donald Trump; Vladimir Putin and Alexander Ovechkin;
Read more »
Russia to put nukes near Belarus’ western border, envoy saysPutin has said that construction of storage facilities for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus will be complete by July 1
Read more »