Special security measures for Vladimir Putin, increasingly protected by the Moscow apparatus. The Presidential Security Service (SBP) of the Federal Guard Service (FSO) which protects the president and other high state officials in Russia has increased, with the approval of the Kremlin leader, the already stringent measures to protect the president, three different sources cited by the Moscow Times announced.
Putin “is protected by an entire army of guards, visible and invisible”, explained one of them, on the sidelines of the Victory Day celebrations. Among the risk factors considered by the Kremlin is the mandate of arrest of the International Criminal Court, Ukrainian drones, sabotage and Islamist attacks. An upgrade in the president’s security came after the assassination of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 and last month’s attack on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denies that there have been changes but in reality the controls are pervasive, from the tasting of every food with a portable laboratory that follows Putin everywhere, to personal chefs who are also always travelling, shopping included, with President.
From 2023, Putin, under his jacket, wears a bulletproof vest in public. When Putin laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on the slopes of the Kremlin on May 9th, he was surrounded by about twenty agents wearing sunglasses and armed with systems shaped like a briefcase. Dozens of other agents remained outside the frame of the cameras and dozens of SBP snipers were on the roof of the Kremlin, the GUM warehouses, and other buildings around Red Square.
