FISU: Putin gives FSB carte blanche to suppress “threats” to State Duma elections

On February 24, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin addressed the Federal Security Service and gave the security forces carte blanche to suppress any dissent ahead of the Russian State Duma elections in September 2026.

According to Ukrinform, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine reported this.

“However, the central point was that Putin personally tasked the FSB with ensuring the 'sovereignty' of the electoral process in the upcoming elections – a euphemism for a system in which the outcome is known before voting begins,” the intelligence service stated.

Formally, the speech was about internal security, counterterrorism, and the machinations of Ukrainian special services.

Putin traditionally attributed the rise in “terrorist crimes” to Kyiv and its “foreign curators” — a formulation so universal that it covers any inconvenient incident on the territory of the Russian Federation. On this basis, he announced the expansion of the agency's powers and the deepening of its coordination with the Ministry of Defense, the Russian National Guard, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs—that is, the merging of all instruments of coercion into a single force.

Cyber threats, sanctions pressure, and the misuse of state defense order funds were mentioned separately—a set of issues that eloquently speaks to the state of the country's economy, which has been financing its own depletion for the fourth year in a row, the intelligence report emphasized.

“The ‘fortress under siege’ narrative, which Putin has been exploiting for two decades, has been brought to its logical conclusion in this speech: an external enemy, an internal traitor, and elections that need to be 'protected' – first and foremost from the voters themselves,” the FISU stated.

As reported by Ukrinform, Russia seeks to grant the FSB unprecedented powers to influence the functioning of the country's communications networks.