In October 2022, an engineer in the presidential communications department of the FSO, Captain Gleb Karakulov, escaped from a business trip to Astana, where he accompanied President Vladimir Putin. Karakulov told the Dossier Center about this; the project confirmed his words in third-party sources.
Putin then participated in several events in Astana, including a meeting of the Council of CIS Heads of State. On the last day of his business trip, October 14, 35-year-old Karakulov, to whom his wife and daughter came to Kazakhstan, flew with his family to Istanbul.
According to the engineer, who worked in the unit responsible for communications between Putin and the prime minister on trips, he began to think about quitting after the outbreak of war, but put off leaving until he received a new passport. In total, he has been in the service of the FSO since 2009.
The man claims that he decided to leave after the start of mobilization in September, when he learned about a business trip to Kazakhstan: “I had an idea that this is a good option, which you can’t miss: either continue to suffer and serve, or quit — and then a direct road to the front, or leave.”
On a business trip, FSO employees were issued passports to confirm their identity. On October 14, after work, Karakulov told his colleagues that he had a stomach ache and would be in the room, while he went with his family to the airport.
“There were a lot of messages when I turned off the phone. And there was correspondence like: "Where is he there? Maybe he went there? Maybe he's already here? Let's go to the room. He has no one there. I do not consider such messages. But it is precisely the format "oh you scoundrel" — there are two or three such messages,” he recalls.
According to Karakulov, almost a month later, “November 8 or 9,” his relatives were searched because of his escape, while they “were in another city.» He himself, according to the Dossier Center, is now «safe.» The Ministry of Internal Affairs put the engineer on the wanted list, the article in the database is not disclosed.
