Russian President Putin has blamed the FSB for stepping up measures to protect the infrastructure that provides electricity and natural gas to the Crimean peninsula after the shelling of the Crimean bridge.
Responsibility for the security of the bridge, which is the main supply artery for Russian troops in Ukraine, was divided between 3 parties: the Ministry of Defense, which monitors the airspace, the National Guard of Roszhavardia, which monitors the sea, and the Ministry of Transport monitors road and rail routes.
But after the massive explosion on the Crimean Bridge on Saturday, President Putin decided to place the responsibility for the protection and security of the bridge and other infrastructure on the Federal Security Service, his security service of choice, to ensure that such incidents do not happen again.
What is the Federal Security Service?
The Federal Security Service (FSB) is Russia’s main security agency responsible for counterintelligence, internal border security, counter-terrorism and surveillance, as well as investigating other types of serious crimes and violations of federal law within state borders.
The service was created in 1995 when former Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a law reorganizing the counterintelligence service, leading to the creation of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the Soviet State Security Committee.
The headquarters of the apparatus is located on Lubyanskaya Square in the center of Moscow, where it occupies the main building of the former KGB, and since 2008 it has been headed by General Alexander Bortnikov.
General Alexander Bortnikov, head of the Russian FSB
In 2003, new functions of the Federal Security Service were added, including the Border Guard Service and a large part of the Federal Agency for Communications and Informatization, leaving the two main components of the former Committee for State Security administratively independent of the Federal Security Service, foreign intelligence, and the State Guard.
Service in the FSB is military, as in the armed forces, police and other power structures, but its employees do not wear military uniforms.
Ever since Putin came to power in Russia, he has treated the Federal Security Service as his preferred security agency, the successor to the venerable Soviet intelligence service (KGB) to which Putin himself belonged.
With the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February last year, Putin planned to use the Federal Security Service as a special operations force that would bolster the efforts of the Russian military.
With the onset of the war, the role of a foreign federal security unit known as the Fifth Division emerged, and it is the only division of the agency’s 12 divisions that participated in the preparatory phase for the Ukrainian war. in addition to other tasks performed by the agency’s anti-terrorism, counterintelligence and investigative departments, while the department took over economic security, the implementation of Russia’s New Economic Policy.
The agency has faced accusations since the start of the war of arresting and imprisoning opponents back home, which Russian authorities deny.
