 directorate in that city. When Putin headed the FSB secret service before becoming prime minister, Cherkesov was installed as his trusted deputy. No further details were immediately given on Cherkesov's cause of death in St Petersburg. In 2007, Cherkesov had suggested in a newspaper that the secret services were becoming corrupted under Putin. MORE : Paranoid Putin won't go to G20 because he thinks a world leader will slap him MORE : Putin ally who runs Russia's shadow army admits Zelensky is a 'strong, nice guy' MORE : Vladimir Putin claims the West is 'playing a dangerous, dirty and deadly game' Instead of being 'warriors', senior officers were enriching themselves as 'merchants', he warned. An outraged Putin blamed him for washing dirty linen in public, and hinted his longtime ally Cherkesov was hardly clean. 'I consider it incorrect to air such problems in the media,' he said. 'And if someone acts in this way, makes such claims about a war of the special services, he himself must first be impeccable.' At the time an agent and also a former agent working for Cherkesov – then Director of the Federal Drug Control Service – died mysteriously from 'poisoning'. Cherkesov was fired from this role in the wake of his criticism of the secret services under Putin. Some interpreted his demise and the poisonings as due to brutal turf wars among Putin's warring henchmen. Yet Putin did not want to lose){kind=link}
NEWS… BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT
A close KGB spy mentor of Vladimir Putin’s who suffered demotion after publicly criticising the Kremlin leader has died from an unexplained ‘serious disease’ .
Ruthless Viktor Cherkesov, 72, once in charge of crushing Soviet dissidents, was crucial to the Russian president’s rise but the pair later had strained relations.
Aleksandr Khinshtein announced the passing of Cherkesov on Telegram earlier today, but did not mention the cause of death.
Cherkesov served as a KGB officer in Putin’s native St. Petersburg during the Soviet era and later led the Federal Security Service (FSB) directorate in that city.