behind the scenes--who keeps Putin on top

Ivan Mironov in a photograph taken during his time working in the office of the governor of the Samara region.   

5-21-2018       According to his official biography, Mironov was born in 1952 and entered the Soviet KGB in 1974.  He retired from the Federal Security Service (FSB), a KGB successor organization, in 2004 with the rank of lieutenant general. The uniform he wears in official TsKV photographs is that of an FSB general with a "Cossack" insignia sewn to the sleeve.

While working in the FSB in the 1990s, Mironov was reportedly involved in the unsuccessful investigation into the 1995 murder of journalist Vladislav Listyev and the probe into a 1999 spate of apartment-building bombings that killed nearly 300 people and sowed the panic that paved the way for Putin's rise to the presidency. At one time, he was the direct boss of FSB officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, who famously accused the FSB of organizing the apartment bombings and who was murdered in London in 2006. (Mironov is mentioned in Litvinenko's book, Lubyanka Criminal Group.)

After he retired from the FSB, Mironov began a career that was closely tied to Sergei Chemezov, a top member of Putin's inner circle who lived in the 1980s in the same Dresden apartment complex as the young KGB officer and future president, and their families became friendly.   

A "Cossack" assaults an antigovernment protester during clashes in Pushkin Square in Moscow on May 5.

https://www.rferl.org/a/kgb-general-in-cossack-s-clothing-meet-the-man-behind-the-whips/29240578.html

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 Russian President Vladimir Putin conferred the title of Honored Lawyer to the Head of the Legal Department of the Moscow City Election Committee,

Rima Kuznetsova, “for her merits in the development and improvement of electoral law and many years of diligent work,” follows from the presidential decree issued on July 17.  Yesterday about a thousand Moscow residents came out to protest against the decisions of election commissions to refuse to register for the election almost all opposition candidates….On July 14 and 16, protests were held in the Russian capital.

https://en.crimerussia.com/gover/putin-awards-head-of-moscow-election-committee-s-legal-department-despite-scandals-regarding-moscow-/

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7-10-19    “so many officers of elite departments committing crimes,” retired Maj. Gen. Aleksei Kandaurov told the Daily Beast.  “The FSB is not a security service any longer, it has changed its status completely:  it is now a service that enforces Putin’s rule and in exchange abuses its authority for purposes of enrichment.”   https://www.thedailybeast.com/vladimir-putins-top-cops-some-in-the-fsb-are-mobsters-even-kgb-vets-are-ashamed

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(SOUNDBITE) (Russian)  

ALEKSEI KANDAUROV, KGB FORMER MAJOR-GENERAL SAYING:

"Taking into account who Litvinenko was, unfortunately, and God save us from it, and I reiterate, God save us from it, but we should regard the involvement of our Special Forces as the most likely one.”  https://reuters.screenocean.com/record/759216

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