Will the new head of the FSB Directorate stop the security forces' "war" in St. Petersburg?

According to VChK-OGPU and Rucriminal.info, the new head of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, Sergei Demyanishnikov, who previously headed the FSB Directorate T, will begin his duties around April 20th. The general's wife is a business coach who works with the management of Russia's largest banks.

Sergei Demyanishnikov is considered an employee extremely close to the influential head of the FSB Directorate for Economic Security, Sergei Alpatov, who has placed his former subordinates from the FSB Directorate M in every possible position. For example, the FSB Directorate K is headed by Alexei Trukhachev, who previously held the position of deputy head of the FSB Directorate M. The deputy head of the FSB Directorate T is Nikolai Babakov, a former FSB Directorate M official. He will likely replace Demyanishnikov as head of Department T. It was Alpatov who, following the explosion on the Crimean Bridge and the resignation of then-head of Department T of the FSB, Viktor Gavrilov, arranged for Demyanishnikov, deputy head of Department M, to be appointed to this position. Now, the latter is heading to lead the Department in St. Petersburg.

The main headache for Demyanishnikov will be the ongoing "war" that has been going on for several years between the Moscow "outsider" – Deputy Head of the FSB Directorate Sergei Stepanets – and the extremely influential Head of Department M of the FSB Directorate Alexander Gimadiev. The former has strong support in Moscow, while the latter is a favorite of the local elites. This battle, which has already claimed the lives of many businessmen and security officials close to either clan, has so far proved unstoppable.

As our project discovered, the wife of the new head of the Federal Security Service, Elena Demyanishnikova, is a "coach for top executives" who worked as a coach and staff member for the management of Alfa-Bank and VTB. She is now a coach at the Skolkovo School of Management and a partner at a company that collaborates with most state-owned banks and large companies, including Sberbank, Sibur, Norilsk Nickel, Gazpromneft, and others.