In Moscow's Shadows Bonus Minipod: How Putin Is Protected

A mini-episode that paying Patrons heard as part of their Twelve Days of Shadowy Christmas bonuses, opening the gates on Vladimir Putin’s personal security. From rooftop snipers and sealed manholes to an armoured Aurus limo and a “ghost train” that slips through the rail network without a schedule, the machinery is vast, expensive, and designed to smother threats before they form.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Transcript

Bonus Context And Patron Release

MG 0:00

What's this? Yet another in Moscow Shadows podcast? Well, kinda. For a bit of context. And before I get started, if you're a paying patron, I'm afraid you've already heard this. So you might want to go and do something more more useful for the neck with the next twenty or so minutes. Anyway. As paying patrons will know, they get around the Christmas New Year period the so-called twelve days of shadowy Christmas. A daily little bonus. Sometimes it's a essay or a photo essay, sometimes it's pictures, and in well, three cases this year, it was little mini podcast on particular topics. And what I do is a month or so afterwards, these three little podcasts I release to anyone who wants to listen to them. So that's what this is. It's shorter, it's a little bit more informal, it's not particularly timely or news related, but it's just a little bonus. And of course, it is also shameless and naked advertising, in that I hope more of you will become paying patrons. And remember, not just does that mean that going forward you get the mainly weekly Gavarit Moskova press briefing and other various bonuses, but you have access to the whole back catalogue of various additional and bonus things. And of course, come the end of the year, you'll get the next 12 days of shadowy Christmas. And welcome to the 6th of the 12 Days of Shadowy Christmas for 2025-2026. This is being produced on, well, being distributed on the 28th of December, although I will probably distribute it more broadly on, well, probably about a month from now. So, what I want to talk about today, there are periodic suggestions that Putin may be toppled by a coup or by an assassination, which, firstly, I must admit, I think is very unlikely for reasons I'll be coming to, but also be careful what you wish for. Although, in the main, I tend to feel that a post-Putin leader will be better for Russia, better for Ukraine, and better for everyone else. If it comes about as a result of an assassination, it very much depends on the context, who done it, and indeed how Russians respond on an emotional as well as political level. I can actually see it in some ways inclining people much more towards a security-minded figure who can provide them with that sense of safety rather than the kind of bland kleptocratic technocrat that I think actually is otherwise more likely. So just as well that I think it isn't going to happen. And rather than coups, I might talk about coups at some future point, but I want to talk about Putin's personal security just to give people a sense of how extensive it is. And I mean it's something that in a way I experienced myself some years back, back in the pre-2022 days when I was still travelling to Russia. And at one point I was living for a while on Kutuzovsky Prospect, which is one of the great radial arteries of Moscow. And in particular, it connects the centre of Moscow and the Kremlin with out to the west, the Novo Ogaryova region, which is this little village where one of Putin's various palaces and the one closest to Moscow is based. And so, in other words, this was the road down which his motorcade would travel on those times when he could be bothered to go to the Kremlin. And so I had a chance to actually witness the security. And what happens is, I mean, although obviously this is a well-known route, so it's a well-practised exercise, but you know, hours in advance you would have people coming and checking all the manhole covers, making sure that they were fastened down, there was nothing that had been placed underneath them. You had people moving on to the roofs of the tall buildings all along this street. These were people generally from the FSO, the Federal Protection Service, of which more are none, and they would include snipers, spotters with binoculars and the like. Then as things got closer, you would actually have FSO officers coming and standing in to block the doorways of the main buildings, so that you couldn't at that point go in or out. The police would come and block the various side streets, and all that before you then had his massive motorcade with police cars and big black SUVs and vans and an ambulance, all flashing blue lights and the like, zoom past before, once again all this security provision was was lifted. I mean to be perfectly honest, it's it's probably much like what you one would see if an American president was was travelling. After all, Putin, unlike, for example, his uh temporary stand-in, Dmitry Medvedev, prefers the road to the helicopter. He drives in one of various Aurus Senat, Russian-built big limos, again very comparable to the American presidential The Beast. A limo that's not just luxurious, it's heavily armoured, it's got a blast-resistant floor, sealed cabin against chemical or gas attacks, can distribute smoke screens, tear gas launchers, electric shock system, you know, all the works. Now, the people who are protecting him, I mean, there's the SBP, the Služba Bisopasnost di Presidenta, the Presidential Security Service, who are the guys and the main in in dark suits and earpieces providing the close-in and medium range protection around him. And interestingly, I mean they tend to be recruited, I mean they're all FSO officers, but they tend to be recruited from the provinces. So in other words, although they're not hugely well paid, this is their big break. And particularly, one of the sort of routes to further success is to become an adjutant, an aide, whether it's to the president or a member of his family or similar. And you know, if one looks at this a whole series of people who were from the SBP, from Viktor Zonotov, head of the National Guard, um Dumin, former governor of Tula region, now presidential aide, which is definitely a step up from adjutant, uh, Dmitry Mironov, Yevgeny Zinicev, who became emergency ministers, and so forth. So most of them are not going to reach that kind of peak. But nonetheless, you know, this is a very prestigious position. And as I say, I think the fact that they they recruit them very specifically from the provinces means they're that much more likely to feel loyalty and feel that they've been singled out. The SPP is a semi-autonomous, not unless it's a branch of the FSO. FSO is a much bigger organization. Its remit is not just the president's security, though that clearly is their number one task, but also the Prime Minister, other officials, certain key government buildings, and that kind of thing. It's a substantial force. It also includes the Kremlin Regiment, in other words, all those people who guard the Kremlin and who provide the ceremonial guard at the eternal flame and that kind of thing. There's the special purpose garage, which is where all of the various vehicles used by the President and indeed the Prime Minister and the like get housed and also provides all these specially highly trained drivers. I mean, I think there are 31 that are assigned to Putin's detail alone. The Special Communications and Information Service that again provides secure communications that links the President and other key figures, no matter where they are, and also behind the scenes or analytic services, people who are not just doing the maintenance and working out what is the best way to protect these various facilities, but also who are researching potential threats. You know, obviously death threats come in by mail, online, or whatever, and they search them back to see if this is a credible and serious one and that kind of thing. So this is a huge organization which is constantly, frankly, at the head of the line for whatever funding is needed. I mean, they were, for example, the first people to get anti-drone guns that project electronically sort of a jamming frequency that brings drones down, and indeed at jammers. But beyond that, obviously he's going to be protected by whatever other resources are needed, whether it's the police, sometimes it's actually the military. I mean, when he visited Chechnya, um there were combat helicopters providing air support, and when his plane is flying somewhere, there are usually fighters providing escorts. After all, it's not just his motorcade, he does have all these other means of travelling, all of which have been secured as far as they can. When he flies by helicopter, he flies by a Russian helicopter, as you'd expect, a heavily modified uh Mil-17 or technically Mill-8 AMT Shah, which again has all the various bits and pieces you'd expect to protect it. The claim is that actually back in, I think it was May of this year, when Putin was visiting the Kursk region on the border with Ukraine, which had been briefly part of it occupied by Ukrainians, anyway, the claim is that it was swarmed by Ukrainian drones, which were either jammed or shot down. Now, if this is at all true, I presume that it was actually escort aircraft that did the shooting down and certainly the heavy lifting of that. But I also would imagine that this was an accident. Because I think if the Ukrainians had killed Putin with drones, God knows what the response would have been. But I mean the the thought of even I mean, the nightmare scenario would have been response with a tactical nuclear weapon on Kyiv. But anyway, I mean I think that it would have certainly led to a pretty apocalyptic response. And remember, the Russians have held back since the very early stages of the war. As near as we can tell, they've held back from trying to kill Zelensky himself. They haven't hit his his residence or the like, which again I think is in part a sort of uh an a desire for well, first of all, that that definitely is breaking something of a unspoken but very real international taboo. But also that sense of, well, we won't go after Zelensky if you don't go after Putin. What else? Well, he's got a presidential aircraft, a wide-body Liushin IL-76300PU, which again is fitted with advanced communication systems, as well as all kinds of anti-missile systems, jammers, electronic warfare, and even the so-called President S laser blinding system, meant to sort of jam any seeker heads. Increasingly, though, he's not travelling by plane, because after all, as soon as you fly, you are trackable on various flight radar systems and the like, but instead in his personal train, which can be of anything up to twenty or so cars, though is is usually fewer. And the various wagons include offices, obviously his own personal residential wagon, a gym, a sauna, a cosmetological laboratory, which is basically a beauty salon to you and me, dining car, communication suite, troop compartment, electronic warfare systems, cars to house staffers, even a spare diesel locomotive in case the main one breaks down. The thing is the livery of this train looks just like any other Erged, any other Russian railways train. But on the other hand, it is distinguishable first by the fact that it's got these communications domes on the roof, but also because it's a ghost train. It's never on any schedule or the like. But nonetheless, assiduous train spotters have snapped it on many various occasions. The thing is exactly, he has been, particularly since 2021 apparently, been using his train increasingly because it is that much less trackable. And even there are now special little railway spur lines to his various palaces from the main trunk. And I suppose this gives something to talk to Kim Jong un, another assiduous uh user of trains rather than any other means of transport. It gives him something to talk about. So that's how he he moves around between what are generally his palaces. As I said, he doesn't really spend much time at all in the Kremlin except for official events. He doesn't work there if he can avoid it. Instead, he goes to his various palaces, which as you imagine have extensive security systems, are garrisoned by FSO troops, they even have uh Pantzir S1 surface-to-ware missile systems, and probably a lot more these days in the age of drones. But one of the things that I find interesting is he has absolutely identical office rooms in each of them. Now, this is not because of some kind of obsessive compulsive disorder, but rather so that when he's shown on pictures or video commun communicating, you know, usually by video screen, he enjoys video uh conferences with his various underlings, there is nothing to give away which of his various palaces he's from. So they might say he's you know connecting in from Valdae or wherever, and that cast could be just simply to mislead people about his actual location. But, well, there's also, as you'd imagine, all kinds of other ways. I mean, just like the Kremlin, these people, these places all have GPS spoofing systems, so that if you are, for example, close to one of those and on your phone trying to find where you are, it'll tell you you're somewhere distinctly different. And particularly these days, that's in order to again provide an additional um protective measure against drones. It's actually though quite a pain in the backside, though, in the central Moscow, the ones in the Kremlin. Certainly back in my day, um it if you were close to the Kremlin and tried to use your phone to, for example, look look on a map, it would tell you you were at Vinukova Airport, on the outskirts of Moscow. And I'm told, certainly as of this summer, that most likely it would tell you you were in all places Crimea. Well, what else can one say about the security around him? Well, of course, the FSO provides all the chefs who prepare his food. Everything goes through rigorous food safety checks, even if it's something that, you know, Putin himself sometimes goes fishing or hunting, even if it's something that he's caught and he says he wants to have for dinner, they will still put it through those food safety checks, presumably in part just to ensure it doesn't happen to be an unfortunately diseased animal that Putin just killed. But also, presumably considering the theoretical chance, and remember, the job of a personal security officer is to be a professional paranoiac, the chance that people actually thought, well, let's infect these animals in the hope that Putin shoots them and eats them or whatever else. And of course, there are, if we're going back to very medieval practices or pre-medieval practices, food tasters. But it's worth noting that although clearly the the SBP is the sort of the elite force, but the FSO provides the bulk of his personal security, sometimes even the FSO is kept in the dark, at least to the very last minute, of his plans, his movements and his location. I mean, again, this is taking paranoia to a particular sort of nth degree. Then of course, there's the question that is often debated about presidential doubles. Now I think this is massively overblown, and people keep looking at photos and saying, oh look, you know, in this one his ears look a bit different, or something like that. I'm not convinced that either there are as many doubles as some people suggest, or that they are used to the extent that is claimed. I mean, indeed, there is also the ludicrous claim that uh Putin was died and has been stuffed in a freezer in his palace in Valdae, and simply his duplicate or one of his doubles is doing the Putin job while being controlled by a sinister cabal who really run the country. Absolute nonsense, but on the other hand, would would make for a great film or these days a miniseries. But anyway, it is clear that there is at least one double, because there are certain times when Putin does things clearly which would be an absolute breach of his usual security protocols, and quite frankly, I see no evidence that Putin comfortably goes beyond those protocols himself. So there was one time, for example, when he was shown driving in an ordinary car around Mariupol, the in the process of reconstruction captured Ukrainian city, and he was just in an ordinary car and there was not the huge arrays of security. And likewise Putin recently claimed, rather implausibly, that he just sometimes drives around without the motorquay, without the flashing blue lights, just to get a sense of what's really going on. I don't believe that for a minute. I don't frankly believe the SBP would allow him to do it. Because after all, when he travels, and particularly it's if it's say a foreign travel, I mean he travels with 80 to 100 security officers. Obviously, they don't all actually travel with him at the time, there's an advanced team and such like. And well, obviously they don't only just check every single place he'll be, where he'll be sleeping, all that kind of stuff. They also bring every bit of food and drink that he's going to imbibe. I mean, this actually caused a bit of was a bit of an issue on his recent trip to India, for example. But, you know, if he's engaging in a sort of champagne toast with his hosts or whatever, the champagne in his glass, which may well not be champagne at all, I mean he's not really much of a drinker, but whatever is in his glass will have been poured separately from a bottle that was brought in by the FSO, not whatever the locals are dispensing. And in some ways there is a certain circularity to the process, because as is also known, there is some poor, unfortunate FSO officer whose job is to actually collect Putin's bodily functions. Yes, there is someone who is a pooper scooper for Putin. Obviously, it's because it's it's it's done in some kind of sealed toilet that is also brought in. But the idea being that uh otherwise, if foreign intelligence services could get a hand on Putin's bodily waste, they could check that for to see what his condition of his health or anything else is. Now, this gives a sense of just how multi-layered, extensive, expensive, and in some cases bizarre Putin's security is. It is also, it seems, extremely effective. I mean there was a we know about a claimed at least attempt back in 2012 that was actually foiled in in Ukraine. Those are the days when the Ukrainians actually wanted to stop Putin being killed. We don't know how many others may have been tried, but there certainly have not been high profile ones. But of course, no security is complete. I mean Caesar was sort of stabbed to death by senators, led by Brutus. To be honest, I can't see what would be the equivalent, I don't know, Dumin mobilizing the members of the State Council to mob him. There was Indira Gandhi, who was killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards in 1984 because of what was called Operation Blue Star, which was carried out against Sikh militants and indeed the highly sacred Sikh Golden Temple. You know, it's worth noting, frankly, if you are going to, I won't say engage in holy war, but certainly sort of tiptoe a little bit close to that, it's worth looking at the composition of your personal security detail and make sure you're not about to uh infringe on their most closely held beliefs. So people still do get killed. But on the other hand, I think that it sounds pretty damn unlikely. I mean, having said this, probably then two days after I put this out, I'll be proven wrong. But anyway, as I say, I think it's pretty unlikely that Putin will succumb to an assassin's knife, bullet, poison, or drone. And as I also say, it's probably just as well. Because nothing is most likely to get a kind of Putin 2.0, a younger, potentially smarter Putin who has something to prove and quite possibly is going to blame whoever really did it Ukrainians and Europeans for what went down. And as a result, it could actually be a lot more dangerous for the rest of us. So, in that respect, if in only that respect, I continue to hope for a long life for Putin. Unless, of course, that Natural causes does it for us.