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The latest Putin purge was directed toward the Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB). It is the modern-day KGB where Putin worked before, he became the president.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not going as Putin planned. And Russia is being hit with heavy losses. 

The failed Russia-Ukraine war continues to be a disaster on all levels for Russia. And it seems that President Vladimir Putin believes the way forward is a series of good old-fashioned, Soviet-style purges. 

At the 3-week mark of the invasion. Putin purged the Russian forces involved in the Ukraine invasion. The head of Ukraine's security council reported that Putin fired eight generals. And he demoted a bevy of other officers.

Putin also fired Roman Gavrilov, the deputy chief of Rosgvardia, the Russian national guard. Rosgvardia was deployed into Ukraine alongside the Russian military and suffered heavy losses.

Putin also switched commanders on the Ukraine front. He has promoted Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov aka The Butcher of Syria.

Putin Purge FSB 

 According to the Times of London reporting on Monday, more than 150 FSB agents have been dismissed.

 The ousted agents belonged to the Fifth Service. Which is a division that Putin set up when he directed the FSB in 1998. The agency’s directive was to carry out operations in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. And the goal was to keep those countries in Russia's orbit. 

Last month he placed Sergei Beseda, the former head of the Fifth Service, under house arrest.  And he has been transferred to Lefortovo prison in Moscow. 

Lefortovo is the worst prison in Russia. It was used as a place for interrogations and torture during Stalin's 1930s Great Purge. 

Putin’s imprisonment of Beseda sent a "very strong message" to other government elites in Russia, Andrei Soldatov, an expert with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), said in an interview. 

Beseda's arrest initially seemed like retaliation for intelligence errors in Ukraine.

"I was surprised by this," Soldatov said. "Putin could have very easily just fired him or sent him off to some regional job in Siberia. Lefortovo is not a nice place and sending him there is a signal as to how seriously Putin takes this stuff."

Soldatov also suggested Putin may suspect Beseda of having given state secrets to the CIA.

The Fifth Service branch is "the most sensitive department of the FSB department, which is in charge of espionage in Ukraine. And now it looks like Vladimir Putin finally understood that the intelligence he was given before the invasion was not extremely accurate. And he has started looking around trying to find someone to blame."