Generals’ war: how Sergey Demyanishnikov’s conflict with Sergey Sapunkov over the personnel chief’s nephew split the FSB leadership
A source reported that the transfer of the head of FSB’s T Directorate, Sergey Demyanishnikov, to the position of head of the Directorate for Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast may be connected to his ongoing “war” with the FSB’s chief of personnel, Sergey Sapunkov. The two generals dragged the entire FSB leadership into their confrontation, and it became obvious that they could no longer remain together in the Central Administration.
According to the source, everything started because of Sapunkov’s nephew. The relative of the chief of personnel had been seconded to the T Directorate, but for some reason, Demyanishnikov took a dislike to him and demanded that the man be removed from the T Directorate. This offended Sapunkov.
Sapunkov activated his resources in the FSB’s Security Service (USB) and a number of serious patrons.
Demyanishnikov also had influential friends. For example, he was a close friend of Yevgeny Zinichev, the Minister of EMERCOM and former deputy director of the FSB, who died under strange circumstances at a waterfall near Norilsk in 2021.
As a result, the matter reached the level of deputy directors. FSB Chief of Economic Security Sergey Alpatov, who had previously been Demyanishnikov’s superior in Directorate M and is considered his patron, tried to reconcile the generals—but to no avail.
It became clear that “two elephants in a china shop” could no longer work together. And while transferring the chief of personnel would have been a complicated matter, they found a position for the head of the T Directorate in Saint Petersburg, just as the head of the local FSB office was retiring.
