MOSCOW (AP) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered the country’s top counterintelligence agency to redouble its efforts to tackle what he described as Western attempts to destabilize the country.
Speaking at a meeting of senior officials from the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB’s main successor agency, Putin pointed to the “so-called Russian containment policy”, accusing it of including efforts to “derail our development, slow it down” , create problems along our borders, cause internal instability and undermine the values that unite Russian society. ”
The Russian president added that these activities by foreign powers, which he did not name, are aimed at “weakening Russia and putting it under external control”.
Russia’s relations with the West plummeted to post-Cold War levels after Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s meddling in the 2016 US presidential election and, more recently, the arrest of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and a radical repression of protests demanding his release.
Navalny, Putin’s most prominent backslash, was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous agent poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charge and accused Navalny of cooperating with Western intelligence agencies – statements he ridiculed.
Earlier this month, Navalny was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for violating the terms of his probation during a convalescence in Germany. The sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny rejected as forged and the European Court of Human Rights found it illegal.
Navalny’s arrest sparked a wave of protests that drew tens of thousands of people to the streets of Russia. Authorities arrested about 11,000 people, many of whom were fined or sentenced to seven to 15 days in prison.
Following the demonstrations, the Kremlin-controlled parliament toughened the punishment for disobedience to the police and introduced new fines to fund demonstrations. Putin on Wednesday sanctioned these new bills.
Without naming Navalny, Putin attacked the Russians who are supposed to serve foreign interests.
“It is necessary to draw a line between natural political competition, competition between political parties, ideological platforms, the various views on the development of the country and activities that have nothing to do with democracy and that aim to undermine stability and security of our state, in serving foreign interests, ”he said.
The Russian president emphasized the need for the FSB to protect the parliamentary elections scheduled for September from any “provocation”.
He praised the agency for disrupting the activities of foreign spies, saying it unmasked 72 foreign intelligence officers and 423 of its informants.