The recent search for a peaceful solution to the war in Ukraine has shown that Russian President Vladimir Putin's intelligence services are displacing the Foreign Ministry in high-level international talks, something that security analysts say never happened, even at the height of the Cold War.
"The Wall Street Journal" made this conclusion because a new face appeared in the Russian-US talks on Ukraine last month - the rarely seen "in the spotlight" intelligence general Sergei Beseda.
He is one of Russia's most powerful spies, and has rarely been photographed; for decades he has been chosen to lead Vladimir Putin's most secret operations. Now he has become a public figure, the newspaper notes.
At this time last year, the intelligence officer known to the CIA as Barona was working top-secret, meeting with U.S. spy agency officials every few weeks in hotels under assumed names to negotiate the largest prisoner swap in U.S.-Russian history. The swap, which took place on Aug. 1, led to the release of 24 prisoners, including the Wall Street Journal correspondent. Evan Gershkovich.
This year, the 70-year-old intelligence veteran returned publicly to the same hotels to negotiate peace with the Trump administration over Ukraine, potentially heralding a rapprochement between the United States and Russia.
Beseda’s appointment shows how Putin’s intelligence services are displacing the Foreign Ministry in high-level international negotiations, something that security analysts say never happened, even at the height of the Cold War, according to the "Wall Street Journal".
Kiev accuses Beseda of waging a campaign to undermine its efforts to break away from the Kremlin, saying that before the hot war began, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) had released Ukrainian polling data that could have helped inform decisions about whether Moscow should launch a special operation. Former senior Ukrainian officials have said he was involved in an operation several years earlier, during the 2014 overthrow of the pro-Russian president in Kiev, in which dozens of pro-Western protesters were killed by police. The Kremlin says his presence was solely related to guarding the Russian embassy.
When Lieutenant General Kirill Budanov, head of Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, was asked in an interview with "Ukrainska Pravda" in 2023 who the most dangerous Russian was, he first refused to answer, then named Beseda. "He did a lot of bad things for Ukraine," he said.
Beseda, who joined the KGB in the 1970s, shortly after Putin, is one of the few Russian officials with direct ties to the president. Few in the West know about him except for intelligence analysts, but a Wall Street Journal investigation has shown that he played a key role in some of Russia's most secret operations.
Intelligence officials and diplomats say the involvement of Besed, who helped plan the "special operation" in Ukraine, is a message to Kiev that Putin is still seeking to establish political control over Ukraine. Neither Ukraine nor most European countries can reconcile themselves to such a goal.
Barona
During Joe Biden's presidency, when the conflict between Russia and Ukraine brought the confrontation between Washington and Moscow to its highest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, both countries relied on their intelligence services to maintain diplomatic contacts. Beseda was one of the few Russian officials allowed to communicate with U.S. officials, the publication recalls.
Beseda’s CIA nickname, Barona, refers to his love of custom-made clothes and his habit of smoking cigars, a nod to his time in Havana. "Colonel General Beseda was assigned by the Kremlin to negotiate prisoner exchanges," said a former American official who negotiated with him. "These cases are controlled by the FSB down to the smallest detail."
There are few public photos of Beseda. In one, he sits expressionless in his office next to the white, dial-less landlines that Soviet officials used to communicate securely with the Kremlin. The FSB website does not list him among its chiefs.
Beseda almost never speaks to journalists, except for an interview with the FSB's internal magazine in 2012, when he pointed out the need to strengthen Russia's cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies. "Every sane person understands that you cannot survive alone in this world," he said at the time.
His star began to rise through certain connections about 40 years ago. As a young officer in the 1980s, Beseda worked in the "American Department" of the KGB's Second Main Directorate, which was tasked with monitoring American intelligence officers in Moscow, which gave him access to a secret communication line with the CIA.
Since last year, Beseda has been an advisor to FSB director Alexander Bortnikov. Before that, he headed the FSB's Fifth Directorate, which oversees the service's relations with foreign partners and American agencies. The service includes the Operational Information Department, the foreign intelligence unit of the FSB, which, according to American and former Russian security officials, led the planning of the special operation.
End of the war in Ukraine, as Putin's intelligence chief sees it
The head of Russian foreign intelligence, Sergei Naryshkin, commented on the conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, reported the "Frankfurter Rundschau". Naryshkin has demanded that Ukraine renounce its membership in NATO and recognize the territories claimed by Russia. Despite several hours of talks between US special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian President Vladimir Putin (on April 11), Moscow's goals do not appear to have changed. Among other things, the St. Petersburg meeting focused on ending the war in Ukraine, the newspaper noted.
"The terms of the peace agreement, of course, include a nuclear-free, neutral status for Ukraine; demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian state; repeal of all discriminatory laws that were adopted after the 2014 coup," Naryshkin explained, as quoted by TASS, referring to the events of 2014, when then-pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych lost his post as a result of pro-Western demonstrations.
The head of Russian intelligence added that the agreement should also include "recognition of the sovereignty and territorial borders of the Russian Federation - the current territorial borders". In 2014 Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and in 2022, after controversial referendums, declared the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia as Russian territory. However, with the exception of Crimea, Russia does not exercise full control over these territories, notes "Frankfurter Rundschau".
The head of Russian intelligence spoke positively about the resumption of dialogue between Moscow and Washington. At the same time, Naryshkin accused the governments in Berlin, Paris and London of escalating the conflict. During his visit to the Belarusian capital Minsk, Naryshkin explained that Russia and Belarus, which also borders Poland, are observing increased NATO actions on their borders.
According to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, Russia and the United States are working hard to find a peaceful solution to Ukraine. However, he accused Europe of trying to prolong the conflict by supplying weapons to Ukraine. Both the European Union and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky deny these accusations and emphasize their goal of achieving peace from a position of strength, the newspaper notes.