Overview
- The new ZDF film "Putins Schattenmänner" presents on‑camera testimonies from former FSB personnel and a recruited ex‑hacker, with an intelligence expert warning hackers have become central to Putin’s hybrid war.
- Ex‑hacker Wladislaw Chorochorin recounts FSB‑directed operations during the 2008 war with Georgia to hack websites, cut phone service, and block ATMs, with orders to switch off power and gas.
- Chorochorin describes a "paradise for hackers" within state structures where cyber operators are well paid, while saying he withdrew from such work and now regrets his past actions.
- Former FSB officer Alexander Fedotov alleges unlawful methods inside the services and claims President Vladimir Putin personally makes final decisions to kill opponents.
- Journalist Roman Dobrochotow likens the FSB’s Second Directorate to a "Russian Gestapo," and opposition figure Vladimir Kara‑Murza says arrests and court cases against critics occur daily, with the Litvinenko poisoning recalled as an example.