"War Against Ukraine Has Split Putin's Strongmen"

There are those who believe the war against Ukraine is pointless and unprofitable for Russia.

The Kremlin has reacted to the statement about the conflict between the political authorities, the army and the security services in Russia and actually confirmed this thesis. No one in Moscow has denied the words stating that even Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not know about Russia's military invasion in Ukraine. There are disagreements in Russia: one part of the security services does not support the war and considers it pointless, and the other part believes that the fifth service of the FSB has ruined the military confrontation, which, they say, should have been prepared for in a different way. This was stated by investigative journalist of the Bellingcat group Christo Grozev.

He said on air of Ukraine 24 that Peskov had actually confirmed that some representatives of the highest echelons of the Russian government were not aware of the future Russian attack on the Ukrainian state.

"There was an unprecedented reaction from the Kremlin after my interview with Gordon, in which I said for real that specific people at the top did not know at all that the war was being prepared. And yesterday Peskov started to respond to this challenge and, incidentally, confirmed it. First he said that Bellingcat cannot always be trusted, and then he said that yes, it was impossible to tell everyone about it, that the war was starting, because it is such a sensitive topic," said Grozev.

According to him, no one in Moscow has refuted that Lavrov, the foreign minister, had any information about the impending war. The situation points to disagreements within the Russian security services.

According to the journalist, one can consider as a fact the presence of criticism against the FSB's fifth service, which has been working on the issue of Ukraine for eight years, but has let Putin down. At the same time, there is also no unanimity among those who criticise the department.

"It has been said and written quite a lot that the fifth service of the FSB - the one that has been dealing with Ukraine for eight years (they had a huge budget to deal with it during the eight years) - it has let Putin down with its poor intelligence and the poor development of its agents inside Ukraine. This is a fact. However, the others, who are now using the Fifth Service as a scapegoat, they are not a monolithic front either," says Grozev.

The Bellingcat investigator believes that there is a group of security officials who do not support the war with Ukraine in private conversations, calling it pointless and unprofitable for Russia. Another part blames the FSB's Fifth Service for derailing this war and criticises it for its preparation for combat operations. This group notes that Moscow should have been preparing for a full-scale war against NATO, not just Ukraine, and the work of the fifth service has been a failure. They also argue that the Ukrainian army is very weak and cannot count on the support of the North Atlantic Alliance.

"So there is a complete disagreement. There is a party of "hawks", there is a party of those who want to end this as soon as possible. And the bigger this disagreement, the better for Ukraine. It creates a vacuum of power, which allows Ukraine to build up its defence capabilities every day", stressed Christo Grozev.