Senior Russian officials at the Kremlin and in the regions have been forbidden from leaving their posts, claims IStories, an independent Russian media outlet.
IStories is an online investigative news outlet based outside Russia and is run by a well-known journalist Roman Aninn, who said his sources included acquaintances of high-ranking officials in the Presidential Administration.
Aninn told CNN he did not know how many people had tried to quit but had not been allowed to. “However, I know of concrete examples of those who tried to quit. These are governors, [from the] security forces, and people from the presidential administration,” he said.
The journalist declined to provide names so as to protect his sources.
IStories said it had been told by a former officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB) that he knew of “at least two cases when governors tried to leave their posts,” but the Internal Policy Department of the Presidential Administration had banned them from resigning and had hinted at criminal cases against them.
There is no way to verify the claims, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told CNN on Tuesday that reports about high-ranking officials being banned from resigning for the duration of the “special military operation” — as Moscow refers to the war in Ukraine — were “another hoax.”
Aninn said the policy was not formal and never conveyed in writing. “There can be no written refusals or recommendations, because the ban is illegal. It all happens informally. A governor of the region submits his resignation, he is summoned to the Department of Internal Policy, intimidated, called a traitor and threatened with a criminal case if he insists,” he noted.
According to a presidential decree, servicemen under contract (which would include the majority of FSB employees) cannot leave even after their contract expires.
The ban has two goals, Aninn said. If many people leave, then public administration may become unmanageable, so the ban would “prevent the loss of control,” he said, adding that the other goal is to “show the people and subordinates that the authorities are united, that everyone is in place and no one is going to run away.”
