[imagesource:youtube/associatedpress]

A Russian engineer named Gleb Karakulov escaped Russia in mid-October 2022, boarding a flight from Kazakhstan to Turkey with his wife and daughter, saying goodbye to Russian President Vladimir Putin forever.

As an officer in Putin’s secretive elite personal security service, Gleb is one of the rare Russians with ranking who was able to flee and go public with the intimate and classified details of Putin’s life.

Per Moscow Times, Gleb had served as an engineer in the Federal Guard Service (FSO) presidential communications unit and accompanied Putin on more than 180 trips over the past 13 years.

The unit ensures that Putin and his prime minister are provided with 24/7 encrypted communications.

Karakulov told the Dossier Center, which is funded by exiled former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that he considers Putin “a war criminal” adding that even though his defection violated Russian law, “it would have been an even bigger crime if I had stayed in my job”.

Over the course of an hour-long interview, he shared details about Putin’s mind, home, family, and health:

Karakulov offered new details about how Putin’s paranoia appears to have deepened since his decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022.

He said Putin still does not use smartphones or the internet and demands that Russian state-run television be available on his foreign trips:

“He’s been living in an information cocoon for the past couple of years,” Karakulov told the Dossier Center. “He’s pathologically afraid for his life.”

He added that Putin remains paranoid about getting infected with Covid-19 three years into the pandemic and forces every employee to quarantine for two weeks before they can be in the same room with him.

“He has shut himself off from the world with all kinds of barriers: the quarantine, the information vacuum. His take on reality has become distorted.”

The only way an operation as evil and extensive as Putin’s will work is if he’s in deep denial.

Sadly, despite continuous rumours about Putin’s bad health, Karakulov denied that the 70-year-old leader was suffering from a speculated illness:

“He’s in better health than many other people his age.”

Darn it.

The engineer also confirmed that Putin’s family, which the Russian president has never publicly identified, was an “open secret” that had been discussed among fellow FSO officers.

As for his lavish home?

Karakulov said he had confirmed with a colleague the existence of Putin’s opulent palace on the Black Sea after it was detailed in a high-profile investigation by jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s team.

He said that Putin has identical offices in several residences so as to confuse the media about where he actually might be interviewing from.

Gleb is now safe, and not totally unpatriotic.

“Patriotism is when you love your country,” he said. “In this case, our homeland needs to be saved because something crazy and terrible is happening.”

[source:moscowtimes]