Vladimir Putin had a meeting with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin and Director of the Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov. 

The Kremlin, concerned that Alexei Navalny could be an additional source of friction in a system already beginning to grind and groan, is looking for ruthless enforcers. Recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin designated a man named Sergei Korolev as first delegate head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the country’s fundamental security office.

Preceding acquiring this significant level position, Korolev headed the FSB’s Economic Security Service, and before that, the office’s Directorate of Internal Security. That is the place where the authority variant of his life story closes.

Yet, iStories talked with Korolev’s colleagues — who can’t be named in this story for security reasons — and analyzed records from a few prominent criminal cases in which his name showed up.

Incidentally, he has individual associations with a few notable heads of the Russian criminal hidden world who have been blamed for kidnappings and agreement murders. Despite the fact that a few insights regarding these connections have showed up in the press, this appeared to have no impact on his vocation. In fact, his associates’ regard for him appears just to have developed.

Korolev was brought into the world in 1962 in Frunze, the Soviet name for the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek.

As per a few of his colleagues, he came from a military family with great associations: His late dad was chasing pals with Viktor Zubkov, who worked with Vladimir Putin in the St. Petersburg city hall leader’s office in the mid 1990s, later filled in as head administrator, and now seats the leading group of the state oil goliath Gazprom.

Korolev’s previous partners, just as individuals from other law implementation organizations who encountered him, say that, notwithstanding his associations, Korolev’s own profession was based on being “a keen usable” — a high type of recognition in law requirement circles.

In any case, Korolev’s vocation has likewise been interspersed by numerous public disclosures that he has associations with hidden world figures. On the off chance that these clearly affected his ascent to the top, he may have Putin’s group of friends to thank for it.

One such emergency happened in 2004. That March, criminal agents from the St. Petersburg police confined Oleg Makovoz, a financial specialist from Irkutsk, an area in Siberia, who introduces himself as an individual of note and lawmaker. He even ran for parliament at a certain point. Yet, as indicated by the police examination, Makovoz was an individual from a criminal gathering situated in his home area.

The gathering Makovoz had a place with was established in the city of Bratsk in the Irkutsk district, however after some time it extended to different areas of Russia, including St. Petersburg. Russian media, including state outlets, distinguished its chief as a money manager named Vladimir Tyurin — nicknamed “Tyurik.” The United States endorsed him for his crimes in 2017.

In St. Petersburg, Makovoz ran a security firm that utilized previous uncommon powers faculty who had been associated with a progression of prominent agreement murders. (He was subsequently condemned to 23 years in jail for seizing, exotortion, and the homicide of another criminal chief.)

At the time the relationship arose, Korolev was working in the FSB’s Economic Security Service for St. Petersburg and the encompassing area, where his undertakings included battling coordinated wrongdoing and administering law implementation organizations. However, police agents discovered he was additionally speaking with Makovoz during this period. The relationship had all the earmarks of being a commonly valuable one.

With all due respect, Korolev’s associates say that Makovoz was an important wellspring of data, and that the connection among agents and their sources is quite possibly the most perplexing, even philosophical, parts of insight work. To get significant data, one should offer something as a trade off — and it’s not in every case simple to adhere to a meaningful boundary in the perfect spot.

Also, sources said, the Makovoz case was important for a bigger conflict of impact between the police and the FSB in St. Petersburg. At that point, they said, Korolev was fighting with Vladislav Piotrovsky, who headed the city’s criminal police power. In such conflicts, it’s basic for rival sides to dishonor each other by intentionally misrepresenting current realities or introducing them in an uneven manner.

Regardless, because of the Makovoz case, Korolev was moved to the Federal Tax Service. Its head at the time was Anatoly Serdyukov — the child in-law of Korolev’s dad’s old chasing accomplice, Viktor Zubkov. Afterward, Serdyukov became safeguard pastor and Korolev turned into his counsel. Be that as it may, as additional occasions appeared, Korolev kept up his binds with the criminal hidden world of St. Petersburg.

In 2008, Spanish police directed an enormous scope exceptional activity called Troika that brought about the capture of “heads of the Russian mafia,” as the Spanish media portrayed them. Among those captured was Gennady Petrov, a notable St. Petersburg money manager.

In 2010, Spanish specialists delivered Petrov on bail. A brief timeframe later, he and another suspect, Leonid Khristoforov, got back to their local St. Petersburg for clinical treatment and never returned to Spain, regardless of promising to do as such. They were put on a worldwide needed rundown, however the case flamed out. Russian specialists answered to the Spanish court that they don’t had anything to accuse them of, and they were never compelled to return.

Russian law implementation had their purposes behind not aiding their Spanish partners, as indicated by insightful materials seen by columnists.

As per wiretaps of Petrov’s telephone discussions, the supposed coordinated wrongdoing figure was in contact with a portion of Russia’s most elevated positioning authorities, including then-Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, and numerous others. In his discussions, Petrov alluded to Zubkov and Serdyukov naturally as “Vitya” and “Tolik.”

Petrov was likewise on close footing with high-positioning law implementation authorities. One champion among them was a man who shows up in the wiretaps simply by the epithets “Boltai-Noga” or “Gulai-Noga” (which could be interpreted as “Shakefoot” or “Wanderfoot”).

As indicated by wiretaps distributed in 2019 by The Insider, this strange Shakefoot worked for Defense Minister Serdyukov, and worked with him to help Petrov push through the arrangement of specific individuals to key government positions.

For instance, Petrov effectively examined with his conversationalists the arrangement of Alexander Bastrykin to seat the Investigative Committee, Russia’s top law authorization body. In 2007, the day Bastrykin’s nomination was affirmed by the Federation Council, Petrov called Leonid Khristoforov, who had been captured alongside him in Spain:

“The man has been selected,” he said. “Keep in mind, I advised you? So that is it — he’s been designated. Exceptionally high up,” Petrov boasted.

“Gracious, great!” Khristoforov answered.

Around the same time, Petrov got a call from a man alluded to as “Nikolaevich.”

“You found out about Sasha [Alexander Bastrykin], right?” Nikolaevich advised him. “That is it, they’ve designated him.”

“Great, my gosh,” Petrov cheered.

This “Nikolayevich” ended up being Nikolay Aulov, at that point a senior Interior Ministry official. Materials from the Spanish criminal case show that a similar Shakefoot had helped Aulov himself get advanced. The year after this discussion occurred, in 2008, Aulov became representative overseer of the Federal Service for Drug Control.

So who was the puzzling and powerful Shakefoot, who assisted Petrov with getting individuals delegated to the most noteworthy government positions? The Insider proposed that he was, indeed, Sergei Korolev. This end depended on a few bits of proof:

Like Korolev, Shakefoot filled in as a counsel to Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov.

Like Korolev, Shakefoot’s first name is Sergei.

Like Korolev, Shakefoot was associated with the FSB: Petrov reminded his child not to neglect to compliment Shakefoot on December 20, State Security Agents’ Day.

Like Korolev, Shakefoot’s birthday is July 25.

iStories discovered extra pieces of information that the man behind the moniker “Shakefoot” could be Korolev. In November 2007, Gennady Petrov called his child Anton:

“Recently I went to see Shakefoot. There was this… Minaev, a shooter, a rifleman,” Petrov said to his child.

“That is his appointee,” Anton Petrov reacted.

“Ok, I didn’t have the foggiest idea. I asked him: ‘Is he a general?’ He says: ‘No, a rifleman.'”

“He chooses a ton of things for him. His right-hand man. They say he knows nothing about the work, yet he’s his correct hand,” Petrov’s child said.

In this discussion, Gennady Petrov in all likelihood stirred up the last name of the individual he met when he saw Shakefoot. Scarcely any individuals fit the depiction of the marksman he met just as Igor Medoev, who filled in as Sergei Korolev’s delegate in the Defense Ministry. Before that he had procured popularity as probably the best expert sharpshooter in the country as an individual from the FSB’s Special Purpose Center, a counter-psychological oppression unit.

Sergei Korolev

Shakefoot was a wary man. He liked to determine issues in eye to eye gatherings with Petrov, not on the telephone. In any case, on one event, Spanish law authorization specialists figured out how to record his voice. In July 2007, as indicated by the wiretap distributed by The Insider, the more youthful Petrov called his dad, at that point gave the collector to Shakefoot so he could actually welcome him to his birthday celebration:

“Good tidings, Sergei,” Petrov advised him. “I have a major solicitation, that for my 60th birthday celebration, you should be there.”

“I will be there,” Shakefoot answered.

Columnists played this chronicle to two individuals who know Korolev, and both affirmed decisively that it was his voice on the tape. They said that Korolev and Petrov keep on imparting right up ’til the present time, “as all of St. Petersburg knows.”

In 2018, Austria removed to Russia a man named Aslan Gagiev, who is blamed by Russian law authorization for heading a coordinated criminal gathering and requesting murders. As per Russian agents, “the criminal association made and headed by Gagiev started its exercises in 2004 and had in excess of 50 members. Because of crime, 60 individuals were slaughtered in Moscow, the Moscow locale, and the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.”

Notwithstanding, as Novaya Gazeta detailed in 2018, Gagiyev’s gathering was not a commonplace criminal affiliation. Calling themselves “The Family,” they considered themselves to be an arm of the equity framework that filled in when Russian law implementation organizations didn’t take care of their responsibilities. A few individuals from the “Family” even truly accepted that they were a characterized unit of the FSB.

They did in some cases give a type of equity — though vicious and extrajudicial — to casualties of wrongdoings overlooked by the state. For instance, the Family focused on individuals from a posse that kidnapped youngsters in North Ossetia during the 2000s. The head of this pack was politically associated, which clearly loaned them a level of assurance from law authorization. In any case, when the Family took up the case and began killing gangsters, the kidnappings halted.

In any case, they didn’t just execute rough crooks. Spectators and individuals made up for lost time in monetary debates were additionally focused by The Family. Gangsters likewise turned on one another, dreading disloyalty from the inside.

In any case, Gagiev was famous and regarded in North and South Ossetia, where he was known as Big Brother. He participated in the raging of the school seized by fear mongers in Beslan in 2004, battled close by his “Family” in the 2008 conflict in Georgia, and accomplished cause work.

At the point when Russia looked for his removal from Austria, Gagiyev and his legal advisors demanded that he would be in extraordinary peril there on the grounds that he had been recently tormented by FSB agents. (An autonomous Austrian master affirmed this subsequent to inspecting Gagiyev’s wounds).

There is just a single positive reference to a Russian government employee in Gagiyev’s declaration to the Austrian court. Gagiyev didn’t give his last name, however depicted the man with appreciation and regard.

“I was removed from Russia by the top of the 10th help of the FSB. He said there was no way to help me. He said: ‘There is an answer.’ He gave me 10,000 dollars and concluded that this was the solitary thing he could assist me with,” Gagiev told the Austrian court, as per records acquired by journalists.

By the “10th help” of the FSB, Gagiyev doubtlessly implied the Directorate of Internal Security, which at the time was going by Korolev. A few sources affirmed to correspondents that Korolev and Gagiev knew each other well.

For what reason would Korolev help Big Brother? As indicated by sources, Korolev owed something to Gagiyev, who once helped him in a basic circumstance. The idea of that circumstance is obscure, however Gagiyev frequently took a chance with his life to save others. For instance, on one event he intentionally submitted himself as a prisoner to Chechen contenders who had captured a young lady to acquire a payoff from her family. The guerrillas let the young lady go, and Big Brother sat in a pit for ten days until they were paid off.

The FSB initiative knew that Gagiev and Korolev knew one another. At the point when the Gagiev case was being examined in the media, Korolev was purportedly brought by the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, as per one of Korolev’s associates.

“Another person would have begun to mess about, to attempt to create something, however [Korolev] clarified everything clearly. He acted like a man,” his associate reviewed proudly.

Furthermore, this is the primary secret of Korolev’s character. At whatever point his bargaining associations became visible, he appeared to pull off them, however emerged from the circumstance with a far and away superior standing among his partners.

While chipping away at this story, columnists more than once asked Korolev’s associates: “How is it possible that he would be designated representative FSB chief while having such countless associations among hidden world pioneers?”

Both Korolev’s companions and previous adversaries addressed generally similarly: “Who isn’t without wrongdoing? In any event [Korolev] has never sold out anybody. The president likes such individuals.”

In this sense, Putin’s work force strategy bears little likeness to the standards of law and order. Maybe, it all the more intently takes after the rationale of criminal supervisors, for whom faithfulness is a competitor’s principle advantage.

Korolev didn’t react to demands for input.