Being paranoid goes with being a dictator. While the specifics of these revelations are largely new, Putin’s general paranoia has been on display for some time.
Gleb Karakulov, a former officer in Russia’s Federal Guard Service (Федеральная служба охраны – abbreviated in Latin script as FSO), has fled Russia and is providing details of Putin’s paranoiac behavior. The FSO is roughly analogous to the Secret Service in the US – but is larger.
Mr Karakulov escaped to safety via Istanbul while on a business trip to Kazakhstan in October 2022 after accompanying president Putin on more than 180 trips over the past 13 years. It is unclear where the 35-year-old is now.
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The former FSO officer claims president Putin opts to stay “in his bunker” rather than make trips because he is so paranoid about an assassination attempt. The Russian president also allegedly travels with a 2.5 meter high box to prevent his secret talks from leaking and Western bugging.
He also claimed that the Russian president is isolating for a fourth year in a row, out of fear of becoming infected with Covid-19, and staff can only work in the same room as Putin once they have been in isolation for two weeks.
President Putin does not use a mobile phone or the internet, meaning his knowledge of events is filtered via the secret services - and what he watches on state-controlled Russian TV, according to Mr Karakulov.
Putin’s sources of news are his toadies and Russian state TV. They basically just tell him what he wants to hear.
Speaking about the war in Ukraine, Mr Karakulov issued an appeal to officers to come forward with evidence about Putin as a “war criminal,” saying the war is “beyond the pale” and “defies reason”.
“How many nameless victims of this war are there, how many of them are children? How many more such victims are required before you stop putting up with it?” he said.
“What is happening now in Ukraine, all this destruction, this war of aggression, terrorism, and genocide of the Ukrainian people - there is no other word for it - all this is a criminal offence.
“Our president has become a war criminal.”
I certainly won’t argue with him about Putin’s criminality.
There had been previous reports that Putin takes extreme measures to keep his poop from falling into foreign hands. Seriously.
Putin's bodyguards collect his poop on trips abroad and take it back to Russia with them, report says
Presumably, transporting Putin’s poop back to Russia was not among Gleb Karakulov’s duties.
Putin is probably just as paranoid about attempted coups as he is of foreign intelligence gathering. His constant fear and stress are bound to have an effect on his health.
Progression of the “Hey! Baby Jail!”, introduced with the FreeSO Halloween/Christmas 2020 Event
The “Hey! Baby Jail!” was originally a lot different, with an ornate wrought iron fence completely surrounding the player, rather than a stone prison with gates.
The player would have had to make their sim physically climb over the fence in order to get out. This iteration ended up being scrapped because of the animation work required, and the polygon count being insane, the full mesh was nearly 76,000 polygons!
Normally something like that would be made into a flat plane with a texture of a fence on it, but FreeSO doesn’t really do well with transparency partially because there isn’t any backface culling for objects, and sorting is a nightmare. So avoiding it when possible is best.
The final version ended up being a much better fit with the trapdoor and lever which already had medieval influences in their design, so all’s well that ends well!
Security officers druzhina of the FSO ( ФСО - Federalnaya sluzhba okhrany ) at the farewell ceremony for Mikhail Gorbachev in the Hall of Columns - Moscow, September 3, 2022
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