To me as a Russian (though I read the English translation) the part where he really never talked about it with mom rings true sadly. Watching TV is a good indicator too.
Also, made me feel a bit better about not thinking a war would begin, contrary to US intelligence, if even this guy (who saw Putin in person many times apparently?) did not see it coming.
I worry about this guy and his family by the way. I almost wish he didn't go public and draw attention for his family's sake. But I applaud the move.
But on your final point, I imagine being public gives him more security, as security through obscurity when dealing with state actors isn't sustainable in the long run.
This is just so naive. And people in the US Secret Service casually discuss how bombing Syria is wrong? Of course it's like that in those circles, people are selected by that criteria.
I guess this 2018 article from the AP gives it _some_ legitimacy… https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-ap-top-news-london-i...
UPD The Guardian's take on this interview: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/russian-defect...
>The Guardian has reviewed an interview with Karakulov by the Dossier Centre, a political information outfit founded by the exiled Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and confirmed the credentials of the senior Russian communications engineer, who travelled with Putin extensively and helped transmit some of his most secret messages.
He knows how much FSB puts propaganda on the internet and thinks it's successful, potentially overestimating it's reach...?
He probably thinks that every state is doing it ( since US does it), so for him => it can't be trusted.
Never thought of that, but it would explain some things.
To stop this war, his inner circle needs to be addressed in saying they can't win. Currently theirs a rain of money on the table, it's easy to pocket some.
Countries need to focus on actions that will make his inner circle claim they should retreat instead of publicly humiliating Putin.
Eg. Time linear bans on travel during the war for his inner circle.
Starting to confiscate properties ( including their families).
Banning their sons and daughters from our schools. + Their wives and exes from staying here.
Blocking opening a business, blocking circumventions for docking yachts.
...
Just because Kremlin decided to run this "special military operation" it doesn't mean they stopped their espionage in the rest of Europe.
In comparison, USA with its national state security policy and foreign power would never allow for any individual to destabilise country from foreign land for so many years.
NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they diffuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the government and the public, between empire and its subjects. They have become arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators. In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They're what botanists would call an indicator species. It's almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the US preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation. In order to make sure their funding is not jeopardized and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work in a shallow framework, more or less shorn of a political or historical context. – Arundhati Roy, the Indian writer, about the NGO influence in India.[2]
[2] https://socialistworker.org/2004-2/510/510_06_Roy.php#Top
The agent says Putin lives in a bit of an information bubble but also repeatedly says he’s solely responsible for the war.
If this guy is a plant… then his FSB handlers really screwed up!
Whatever their defects, NGOs aren't automatically the tools of western imperialism or whatever idiocy you seem to be promoting about conspiracies against the kleptocratic Russian state. As for Khodorovsky, regardless of his sins, the way in which he was legally treated inside Russia for years was a shameful demonstration of how the Russian state works against basic legal principles.
And yes, many foreign organizations regularly, openly work against the U.S. through NGOs and other organizations with much less danger to themselves than faced by people working against the Russian state. At least within the U.S. one can openly criticize its government without usually being in danger of a prison sentence or state murder.
(though to be fair, the slow creep towards authoritarian behavior by a growing number of governments even in the west is something to really worry about. Cheerleaders of things like blanket TikTok bans and "fighting disinformation" without very seriously qualifying such things should take note of the hole they're digging for the future of free expression.)
If it's the Foreign Agent law (Foreign Agent Registration Act, FARA for short) you're talking about, a common Russian propaganda trick these days, it does allow this kind of activity, but imposes public disclosure of individuals or organisation receiving money from foreign governments, not other individuals as in this case.