Russian President Vladimir Putin transferred one of his top spies tasked with political intelligence in Ukraine from house arrest to the pre-trial Lefortovo prison in Moscow, the Center for European Policy Analysis reported.
According to the report, FSB Fifth Service Col. Gen. Sergei Beseda, and his deputy, were placed under house arrest by Putin's regime in early March for allegedly misusing operational funds and providing the Kremlin with "poor intelligence" regarding the invasion of Ukraine, the Center for European Policy Analysis reported March 11.
Beseda, who led the Fifth Service, was responsible for giving Putin information about the political situation on the ground in Ukraine, where Russian troops stalled in their attempt to take the capital city of Kyiv, and other objectives due to the fierce resistance of the Ukrainians.
The report said Putin felt misled by the intelligence and arrested the department's leadership, now moving Beseda to a pre-trial prison in Moscow.
According to Business Insider, the prison was used by the KGB, the forerunner to the FSB, during the Soviet era to hold political prisoners.
Russian forces invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24 but ran into heavy resistance and saw their progress stalled weeks into the conflict, causing Putin to pull back some forces and regroup.
According to The New York Times on March 22, Putin expected the country to fall in short order, relying on assessments from Beseda and other top spies about Ukraine's capabilities, which a former FSB colonel said were "catastrophically incorrect."
"The enemy was underestimated in every aspect," former FSB Col. Igor Girkin told the Times.
Another former Russian military official told the Times the amount of resistance encountered was not expected.
"There was probably the hope that they wouldn't resist so intensely," Yevgeny Buzhinsky, a retired lieutenant general and a regular Russian state television commentator, said of Ukraine's forces in the Times story. "They were expected to be more reasonable."
The Jerusalem Post reported March 20 that Beseda and his department just told Putin what he wanted to hear rather than the truth about the situation on the ground in Ukraine, which reportedly led to the deaths of several top military officers in the fighting there.
"It is hard to imagine some senior intelligence person talking with Putin and not telling Putin what he wants to hear, especially if it is a belief that is deeply held, like Putin's beliefs about Ukraine," the Post reported former CIA and National Security Council official Jeffrey Edmonds telling The Wall Street Journal about Beseda's arrest.
Another exiled Russian human rights activist, Vladimir Osechkin told the Post, the embezzling of funds was just the pretext to arrest Beseda and his deputy, while the real reason was Putin's anger about the bad intelligence.
"The formal basis for conducting these searches is the accusation of the embezzlement of funds earmarked for subversive activities in Ukraine," Osechkin said in the report. "The real reason is unreliable, incomplete, and partially false information about the political situation in Ukraine."
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.