An internal war erupts inside Russia’s FSB: General Sergei Demyanishnikov removed from Moscow after a conflict with the agency’s chief personnel officer Sergei Sapunkov
Russian sources reported that the reassignment of Sergei Demyanishnikov, head of the FSB’s Directorate T, to the position of head of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region might be linked to his ongoing "war" with Sergei Sapunkov, the FSB’s chief of personnel. The conflict between the two generals involved the entire FSB leadership, making it clear that they could no longer remain together at the central apparatus.
According to the source, everything began because of Sapunkov’s nephew. The relative of the personnel chief had been assigned to Directorate T, but for some reason Demyanishnikov took a strong dislike to him. He raised the issue that the man should be removed from Directorate T. This offended Sapunkov — and the conflict escalated.
Sapunkov mobilized his resources within the FSB’s Internal Security Directorate (USB) and enlisted several powerful patrons.
Demyanishnikov also had influential allies. It is enough to recall that he was, for example, the best friend of Yevgeny Zinichev — the former Emergency Situations Minister, ex–FSB deputy director, who died in 2021 under strange circumstances at a waterfall near Norilsk.
As a result, the conflict reached the level of the FSB deputy directors. The head of the FSB’s Economic Security Service (SEB), Sergei Alpatov, who had previously been Demyanishnikov’s superior in Directorate M and is considered his patron, attempted to reconcile the generals — but failed.
It became clear that the “two elephants in a china shop” could no longer remain together. And while transferring the FSB’s chief personnel officer would have been troublesome, a position was found for the head of Directorate T in St. Petersburg — just as the head of the local FSB directorate was retiring.
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