North Ossetian blogger reveals secrets of FSB after escaping to America

JAMnews

North Ossetian blogger reveals secrets

A young North Ossetian blogger, Fidar Khubaev, claims that he worked for the Russian FSB for two years. Now the “former FSB agent” is in the United States and says that he is ready to provide compromising evidence he has on the intelligence service and the Russian army. Khubaev talked about his “spy career” in an interview with Gulagu.net, which helped him escape to the States.

“Agent Ulyanov”

Fidar Khubaev, 23, got into blogging and activism through COVID dissidence. After a rally of COVID-dissidents in Vladikavkaz on April 20, 2020, which ended in clashes between participants and employees of the National Guard, Khubaev criticized the actions of the authorities and security forces on social networks and ended up at a “preventative conversation” at a local police station.

He continued to write critical posts, however, using foul language against the security forces and arguing that “he won’t go to the police station again.” But he still had to go back to the police station, and this time he was given a choice: either prison or work for the federal security service (FSB). Khubaev chose the latter.

North Ossetian blogger reveals secrets

The new FSB agent received the pseudonym “Ulyanov” and allegedly began working for two agencies at once — the regional FSB and the center for countering extremism of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and provided services to the North Ossetian administration.

Among the orders which, in Khubaev’s words, he received were:

– To build a “troll factory” on social networks and write critical posts about opposition leader Alexei Navalny;

– Post a video that discredits the Canadian scientist Richard Foltz. The professor’s wife is an Ossetian, and he applied for a temporary residence permit in Russia in order to research his book on the Ossetes. He was legally entitled yo it as the spouse of a Russian citizen but was nevertheless denied by the Russian immigration authorities, due to pressure from the FSB.

– Follow the well-known Ossetian journalist and editor-in-chief of Daryal magazine Alan Tshurbaev, who founded the Lampa book club, where young people like to gather.

In addition to all this, Khubaev complains he had to “sign reports that he did not draw up, and did not know the people involved in these documents.”

He characterizes the FSB as an organization that tries to control everything and everyone: not only activists, the opposition, but also the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor’s office, the courts, and the republican government.

In the spring of 2022 Khubaev signed up as a volunteer and went to fight in Donbass as part of the North Ossetian Alania battalion. He was instructed to monitor fellow soldiers, pass on the locations of Ukrainian and Russian troops, note the mood among soldiers, all of which he willingly did. He was expelled from the battalion twice due to conflicts with commanders, but he returned.

North Ossetian blogger reveals secrets

Land of abandoned villages

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On the true path

According to Khubaev, the FSB even planned to “drop” him into the United States.

Khubaev’s outlook on life changed dramatically after his 47-year-old father, Akhsarbek Khubaev, received a subpoena of mobilization after this was announced in Russia in September 2022. With little time to act, he considered asking his superiors for help, but instead wrote to the Gulagu.net organization and said that he had compromising evidence on Russian law enforcement and military structures, sending some documents as evidence. Gulagu.net was interested in these documents, and together with the New Dissidents Foundation, they organized Khubaev’s “escape” from North Ossetia to the United States.

Now Khubaev is ready to spill all the information he has that discredits the Russian military and special services, as well as information on the actions of the Russian army in Ukraine.

Khubaev says he regrets what he did, does not support the war in Ukraine and asks for forgiveness. According to him, he “communicated with local Ukrainians and did not see neo-Nazis among them, as Russian propaganda portrays.” He accuses the Russian army and its military leaders of corruption and professional failure, says that the Russian army is very poorly armed and is much inferior to the Ukrainian. And Russian volunteers, according to his stories, are trained by intelligence officers and paid about $1,700 in cash every month.

In order to prove that he had stopped working for the FSB and no longer carries out their tasks, Khubaev says he is ready to hand over the “hard drive with classified information” he took with him to Gulagu.net employees.

Business class getaway

In North Ossetia itself, none of the departments mentioned by Khubaev commented in any way on his “revelations”.

Some North Ossetian activists recalled that Khubaev tried to communicate with them and offered various ideas and projects, but few people were interested.

Blogger Batraz Misikov recalled that Khubaev tried to contact him in March 2022.

Alan Tskhurbaev, who was spied on by the “former FSB agent”, is shocked by who his book member turned out to be:

“Fidar actually attended our meetings two or three times and participated in our discussions. But never in the club did we notice any attention or face any pressure”

Much more violent was the reaction of Alan Mamiev, against whom administrative cases were initiated on charges of COVID dissidence and discrediting the armed forces of the Russian Federation. Mamiev’s anger had more to do with the North Ossetian security forces than Khubaev himself:

“He was given money, he was supported, and he in turn collected information on law enforcement officers. It was he who got into their confidence and collected dirt on them. This traitor, who escaped and who is now working for foreign intelligence services, was given all preferences in North Ossetia.”

But blogger Zaur Farniev reacted with irony to the fact that the “FSB agent” escaped under the nose of this same FSB. Farniev was amused that Khubaev was very grateful to Gulagu.net, which not only transported him to the States, but business class.

“After watching a two-hour interview with this prostitute Fidar Khubaev, I got the impression that business class to the USA was the biggest shock for him in his life,” Farniev commented.

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North Ossetian blogger reveals secrets