It’s even  wilder than the headline suggests. The FSB embezzled every dime of the billions in bribe money intended for Ukraine, which they figured was a low risk crime because no one – not even Putin – would be crazy enough to invade Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, and the bribe money was in cash so there was no accounting. Meaning no one would miss the dough. 

But then Putin announced he WAS going to invade. And the military made clear it wouldn’t do so unless the Ukrainian military had been bought off so it wouldn’t fight, which the FSB had assured everyone had been taken care of. But since they hadn’t been bought off, the FSB had a big problem. Which they attempted to solve by leaking the invasion news to the US (hence Biden’s preternaturally superb intelligence on the invasion, including assassination attempts on Zelensky) hoping that would dissuade Putin. And the rest, as they say, is history. JL

Sergey Beseda,
head of the FSB 5th-Branch (Ukraine portfolio), has been arrested, along with
his deputy, Anatoly Bolyukh for embezzlement from the state. The whole of the FSB 5th-Branch is under criminal investigation and many
are also under arrest for embezzlement. For years Putin has been placing billions of dollars into the 5th-Branch budget
for bribing Ukrainian military, secret service, internal
security officers, and politicians. (But) Beseda and
Anatoly Bolyukh have been embezzling every dime of the bribe budget,
billions of dollars. And everyone in the 5th-Branch was getting a piece of the
action. It was the perfect crime as spy bribes are paid in cash and (they thought) not even Putin was crazy enough to invade Ukraine

I am going to tell you a story which
explains how and why Vladimir Putin (and the Russian military) so horribly
misjudged the Ukrainian war, a war, the ou