Featured Image Credit: CNN
Topics: Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
Simon Catling
A former undercover KGB agent has responded to recent comments made by Russian president Vladimir Putin during a televised briefing, claiming to know who they were aimed at.
In a national broadcast made yesterday (16 March), Putin said the West wanted to try and use Russians as a 'fifth column' to destroy the native land.
He said: "Of course they [the West] will try to bet on the so-called fifth column, on traitors – on those who earn their money here, but live over there.
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"Live, not in the geographical sense, but in the sense of their thoughts, their slavish thinking", he added.
However, reacting to Putin's address, former undercover KGB agent Jack Barsky told CNN that the target of the speech was the Russian wealthy elite – the oligarchs – who have been targeted by the West with numerous financial sanctions.
"He wasn't attacking ordinary people, he was attacking some of the oligarchs – the ones mostly in London," Barsky told CNN.
"He's ticked off at them because they used to be in his camp and all of a sudden – and all because of their lifestyle being threatened – they are sort of leaving him."
Barsky went on to reference Alex Konanykhin, the former banker and Russian millionaire who has put a $1 million bounty on the head of the president.
"Remember in the past when he first got to power? There were some oligarchs that didn't play with him – he put them in jail."
Barsky was referencing the early 2000s when several oligarchs who were unhappy about aligning with Putin's vision for government in Russia were put in jail. The most prominent of these was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who at the time was one of the most wealthy men in the world, and was sentenced to nine years in jail for fraud in 2003.
He was eventually pardoned in late 2013 and immediately left the country.
Putin's latest address came in the wake of ongoing sanctions against the Russian elite. Just yesterday, the US drew up a target list of 50 wealthy Russian oligarchs in order to punish them for Putin's ongoing war with Ukraine. It was handed to the Russian Elites, Proxies and Oligarchs task force (REPO), a brand new international body established to help countries to identify and track down assets belonging to sanctioned high profile Russians. The task force is set to pool the law enforcement resources of more than half a dozen countries.
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