The former mentor of Russian President Vladimir Putin in K.G.B. And a former associate who later became an outspoken critic died of an unexplained “serious illness,” officials said. He is the latest in a long line of former Putin allies who have died under mysterious circumstances recently
Viktor Vasilevich, Putin’s mentor-turned-critic, died of a “serious” and mysterious illness.
Viktor Cherkasov, 72, died in St. Petersburg, according to a Telegram post by Alexander Khinstein, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy. “Viktor Vasilevich was a wonderful man and a true statesman, an eternal memory,” Khinstein wrote. No cause of death was released , but Russian media reported that it came after a “severe illness”.
Cherkasov was a former head of the Drug Control Service, and a representative of Russia’s Northwestern Federal District, Radio Free Europe reported. He started as a KGB officer. In St. Petersburg in the 1970s, he persecuted regime opponents and investigated anti-Soviet activities. He eventually rose through the ranks to head the branch of the secret organization that was renamed the FSB in St. Petersburg. In 1998, after Putin was appointed director of the FSB, Cherkasov moved to Moscow and served as his deputy.
When Putin ran for president in 2000, Cherkasov worked with his campaign, establishing his status as Putin’s closest ally and member of his inner circle. After his election victory, Putin appointed Cherkasov a member of the Security Council and later appointed him head of the Drug Enforcement Agency. In 2006, Cherkasov led an investigation into a widespread corruption scandal involving senior FSB officers accused of furniture smuggling and money laundering.
Following the investigation, which led to a series of resignations of several senior officials, Cherkasov wrote a controversial opinion piece that revealed details of a secret war being waged by senior officials in Russia’s security services. In an article published in 2007, Cherkasov harshly criticized FSB members, calling them “crooks,” and wrote: “We cannot allow fighters to become traders.”
Putin responded by being outraged that he had aired the FSB’s “dirty laundry” in the press, implying that his former mentor was not a “blue-eyed tzaddik” himself. “I see that it is wrong to publish such problems in the media. If someone behaves in this way, and expresses complaints about war within the special services, he himself must be beyond reproach,” Putin said at the time.
As a result, Cherkasov was quickly demoted and eventually dismissed from government service. Cherkasov later became a member of the State Duma (Parliament), where he spoke out against various reforms, Cherkasov’s second wife, Natalya Chaplina, runs the Rosblatt news agency, which in 2021 was declared a foreign agency by the government.
Cherkasov is the latest in a long line of former Putin allies who have died under mysterious or other unexplained circumstances since the start of the war in Ukraine.