Bortnikov Alexander is one of the most classified persons of the Russian politicum. This is a real gray cardinal of the country. A man with great influence, but not at all public. However, the position obliges him to this - he is the director of the FSB of Russia and the KGB officer with forty years of experience. Our article will tell about the biography, career and personal life of this famous person.
The childhood and youth of Bortnikov
Almost nothing is known about the origin and childhood of the country's main security officer, unlike, for example, his predecessor, Mr. Patrushev. In official sources, it only means that Alexander Bortnikov, whose biography began on November 15, 1951, was born in Perm during the life of the great leader of the peoples, Joseph Stalin, and is Russian by nationality.
Even the ubiquitous journalists are silent on this subject - either they don’t know, or they are keeping silent for some reason. The only thing that leaked into the media space is the characteristic of the young Bortnikov. He was a modest and quiet child, did not like public activity, and achieved academic success exclusively through perseverance, diligence and hard work.
The same can be said about the student years that Alexander Bortnikov spent at the Leningrad Institute of Railway Engineers named after Obraztsova.
Start of work
It is not known whether Bortnikov dreamed of becoming a railroad worker since childhood or if the choice of a university was completely random, but after graduating from the institute in 1973 he got a job in the specialty and worked diligently at the enterprises of Gatchina in the Leningrad Region.
It is quite possible that Bortnikov was not going to connect fate with this sphere of life, but simply worked out the due date for distribution. One way or another, but after two years, his life is radically changing.
KGB
Rumor has it that the quiet and inconspicuous Bortnikov Alexander was recruited by the State Security Committee back in his student years. Then this practice was common in the Soviet Union - employees of the bodies selected staff in universities, stopping, perhaps, not at the most gifted, but at the same time disciplined and diligent. And all this seems to be true, since already in 1975 the “rookie” received a crust of the Higher School of the KGB of the USSR named after Dzerzhinsky. By the way, at the same time, the young strategist (obviously with an eye to the future) joined the ranks of the Communist Party, of which he was a member until its dissolution.
And in the same 1975, Alexander Bortnikov, whose photo is still not well known to anyone, joined the KGB Directorate for the Leningrad Region. He walked the corridors of the most mysterious building in the city on the Neva for almost 20 years. There he probably met Vladimir Putin, with whom they are almost the same age. The current president of Russia has played a significant role in the career growth of his not even comrade - just a good friend. But before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bortnikov’s service did not differ by special ups. At first he was an ordinary opera, then he occupied, although leadership, but rather small posts.
Federal Security Service for St. Petersburg
But after 1991, things began to stir. Alexander Bortnikov, a diligent and patient officer (now already) of the FSB in St. Petersburg and the region, first rose to the deputy head of this organization. After some time, he became its leader. He became the main St. Petersburg security officer in 2003, replacing Sergei Smirnov in this post . The latter was transferred to Moscow.
But Alexander Vasilievich did not have long to work in St. Petersburg. In 2004, Vladimir Putin remembered him and took an old acquaintance closer to himself.
On the approaches to the summit
On February 24, 2004, Bortnikov took the chair of the deputy director of the FSB of the Russian Federation, which before that belonged to Yuri Zaostrovtsev, who was fired as a result of a corruption scandal. Alexander Vasilievich led the counterintelligence department of the credit and financial sector of the Federal Security Service.
True, in this post he remained only a month. In March, the department was liquidated, and its head was transferred to the post of director of the economic security service, which actually meant a demotion.
But Bortnikov was not upset about this. As usual, he showed maximum endurance and was soon rewarded. In 2006, he was awarded the rank of army general, and in 2008 he took a position that you can only dream of ...
The head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov: a new stage in his career
In 2008, Dmitry Medvedev became president of Russia. And this year turned out to be significant not only for him, but also for Alexander Bortnikov. He was appointed director of the FSB.
In this post, he replaced Nikolai Patrushev, whose activities did not satisfy the previous president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. Nikolai Platonovich was too active, often flashed on television, and many of his actions were not coordinated with the country's leadership. As a result, he lost his seat as chief security officer of Russia and was transferred to the secretaries of the state Security Council. The position is rather fictitious than real. And his successor took up real business.
The main activities of the director of the FSB Bortnikov
The director of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, received the powers of the country's chief security officer in difficult times for Russia. In the south, the war in Chechnya continued to smolder , and from the inside the state was undermined by the increasing number of terrorist acts. And with all this you had to do something ...
In mid-spring of 2009, President Medvedev signed a decree abolishing the Chechen counter-terrorism operation, which lasted ten years. It was Alexander Bortnikov, director of the FSB of the Russian Federation, who was to take control of the implementation of this decision in practice. In autumn 2009, the leadership of the operational headquarters of the Chechen security service passed to the central authority.
Slowly, the flame came to naught, and the Chechens returned to normal. And those who tried to stop them from doing this were tracked and caught by the FSB. But terrorism is still here. In the country, as under Patrushev, houses, trains, metro stations and other facilities continued to explode. There were no less human victims.
And although the head of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov, in his reports regularly said that the fight is going on efficiently and more than half of the terrorist acts can be prevented, the facts remain facts. In March 2010, an explosion in the Moscow metro claimed the lives of forty people, and in Kizlyar (Dagestan), about 12 died at the same time. At the beginning of winter 2011, the bombing carried out by a suicide bomber at Domodedovo Airport led to 37 victims. 9 residents and guests of Grozny said goodbye to their lives during the August terrorist attacks in Grozny in the same year.
May and August 2012 became blood-black for Dagestan and Ingushetia. There killed 13 and 8 people, respectively. And at the end of 2013, the attention of the whole world was riveted to Volgograd, where the terrorists first blew up the bus, then fired a bomb at the railway station, and a day after that they blew up the bus. The total number of victims was 32 people, more than a hundred were injured. And this is not a complete list of the terrible acts of terrorists.
The FSB recognizes that terrorism is not easy to defeat, as bandits are constantly recruiting more and more minions. But he speaks more positively of his work than vice versa.
Scandalous stories with Bortnikov
The current director of the FSB of Russia, Alexander Bortnikov, was involved in two high-profile stories. Both of them took place before his appointment to the post of chief security officer of the country in 2008, and both are not confirmed by facts.
The first is connected with Alexander Litvinenko, who spoke impartially about the Russian authorities and was eventually poisoned by London. It was Bortnikov’s that the liberal political forces of Russia, like some foreign secret services, are accused of organizing this murder.
The second story concerns the money of Russian officials on offshore accounts abroad, which Alexander Vasilyevich allegedly helped to withdraw. And his participation in this murky business practically causes no doubts, unlike the scandal with Litvinenko. However, there is no direct evidence of this.
The name of the first person of the FSB of Russia flickered in some other "entertaining" stories. But the loudest were the above two.
General’s personal life
Alexander Bortnikov is married to Tatyana Borisovna Bortnikova, with whom they happily lived together for more than forty years. Today, the wife of the FSB director is a pensioner.
The couple has a son, Denis, born in 1974, who is currently the head of the board of OJSC VTB Bank North-West. In the footsteps of his father, he did not go and preferred the fate of a financier as a security officer, having graduated from St. Petersburg University of Economics and Finance in 1996 and immediately got a job in his specialty.
Apparently, Denis Alexandrovich, like Alexander Vasilievich, is a whole and consistent nature. Both father and son, once choosing a road, go along it to the very end. To victory, of course.