Putin called on FSB officers to identify “traitors”

On March 19, two days after the elections in which, according to official data, he won more than 87% of the vote and was re-elected for a fifth term, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke at a meeting of the FSB board. A significant part of the speech was devoted to the war in Ukraine. Among other things, Putin – for the second time in three days – made threats against the Russians fighting on the side of Ukraine, calling them traitors.

“I am asking, as it has always been in our history, do not forget who they are, identify them by name… We will punish them without limitation, wherever they are,” Putin said in particular.

On the side of Ukraine, such volunteer formations as the Legion “Freedom of Russia”, the Russian Volunteer Corps and the “Siberian Battalion” are fighting. It is asserted that they consist mainly of citizens of Russia. In the last week, these units are making active attempts to break into the territory of Russia, and there are battles on the border.

On Tuesday, Putin again stated that the Russian military repelled all requests for an offensive. Speaking about the Russian volunteers fighting for Ukraine, he called them “scum” and “traitors” and said that the “masters” were “throwing them like cannon fodder to the slaughter.” There are no independent data on the losses of the parties in clashes on the border.

Two days earlier, on Sunday evening, after the publication of preliminary election results, Putin also commented on the fighting on the border and, among other things, threatened those whom he called traitors with death. According to Putin, although there is no death penalty in Russia, these people will “always” be treated as armed criminals who must be killed. He also compared them with the Vlasovs – fighters of the Russian Liberation Army, formed during the Second World War in Nazi Germany to fight the Red Army. Most of the leaders of the ROA were executed by the verdict of the Soviet court, but many ordinary soldiers sentenced to the camps were subsequently amnestied.

In December 2022, Putin already appealed to the employees of the state security agencies with a request to “firmly suppress” the actions of foreign special services and “expeditiously identify traitors, spies and saboteurs”, notes “Nastoyaschee vremya”. After that, the number of criminal cases of treason and espionage in Russia increased sharply. In 2023, Sibir.Realii calculated, at least 98 people were charged with treason, 31 with espionage, and 19 with secret cooperation with foreigners. Courts have received at least 88 such cases, and 50 of them have already been sentenced. The publication notes that this is a historical record for the level of repression by the FSB. Human rights activists believe that the real number of cases can be much larger, and the pace of prosecution will continue to grow in 2024.

Earlier, the founder of the Russian Volunteer Corps, Denys Kapustin, and the Red Communist Party fighter, Kirill Kanakhin, were sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment in the case of treason.