German Ugryumov

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German Alexeyevich Ugryumov (Russian: Герман Алексеевич Угрюмов; October 10, 1948, Astrakhan, Soviet Union – May 31, 2001, Khankala, Chechnya) was a Soviet and Russian navy and security services official. During his childhood he lived in Chelyabinsk Oblast. [1].

[edit] Naval counterintelligence career

In 1972 he graduated from the Caspian Navy Higher School in Baku. Since 1975 he had served for the KGB and successor organizations to it. In 1976 he graduated from the Counterintelligence Higher School in Novosibirsk [2][3] He had served for the Caspian Fleet counterintelligence in Baku until 1992 and worked in Azerbaijan during 1990 Black January. [4] In 1992-1993 he led Black Sea Fleet counterintelligence in Novorossiysk. In 1993 he became the Chief of the Pacific Fleet counterintelligence. [5]

When he was the Chief of the Pacific Fleet FSB Directorate responsible for the navy conterintelligence, he initiated the prosecution of journalist Captain Grigory Pasko on charges of the collection and storage of allegedly classified documents of the Pacific Fleet as well as their transfer to the Japanese NHK TV company and Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Pasko was arrested in Vladivostok on November 20, 1997, as soon as he had returned from a trip to Japan. Pasko insisted that what he had transferred was public documents on ecology and that the case had been fabricated by the FSB, and he was found not guilty by a court in 2000, but later the decision was reviewed and on December 25, 2001, Pasko was convicted for a four year imprisonment. [6][7][8][9][10] By the time Ugryumov had already been dead.

[edit] Second Chechen War

In 1998 new FSB Director Vladimir Putin promoted German Ugryumov to deputy Chief of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate of the FSB for Navy. [11][12] In 1999 he was appointed first deputy chief of the FSB Department for Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight against Terrorism. Since November 1999 and until his death he had led the department and supervised the FSB Special-Purpose Center that included Alpha and Vympel spetsnaz units. [13][14] Ugryumov masterminded the arrest of Chechen warlord Salman Raduev in March 2000. In September 2000 German Ugryumov and Deputy Interior Minister Vladimir Kozlov managed resolution of the hostage crisis in Lazarevskoye (near Sochi) [15]

On December 20, 2000, an anniversary of KGB, President Putin awarded him Hero of Russia for his leadership of a series of special operations conducted during the Second Chechen War. [16][17] On January 21, 2001 president Vladimir Putin transferred the supervision of the military operations in Chechnya from the Interior Ministry and Military to the FSB and had placed Ugryumov in charge of the "liquidation of the leaders of terrorist groups" as head of the regional counterterrorist staff. [18][19] For the first time in the history of Russia the security services have been given control of a military operation [20] In spring 2001 he was promoted from rear admiral to admiral by the President. [21]

On May 31, 2001, in Khankala, main Russian military base in Chechnya, Ugryumov died, according to the official version, of acute heart failure. He was a seriously overweight man, reportedly weighting 140 kilograms, which had probably contributed greatly to his health deterioration. [22] However, Grigory Pasko speculated that Ugryumov's death might be a murder [23]. According to Alexander Korzhakov's Stringer website, some undisclosed FSB sources provided information that Ugryumov had shot himself. [24]

On September 5, 2001, 1265 Yakhont/Sonya class minesweeper BT 244 of the Russian Caspian Fleet constructed in 1988 was renamed in his honor. [25]

On December 9, 2002, Novaya Gazeta published an open letter of Yusuf Krymshamkhalov and Timur Batchaev, Karachai suspects in the 1999 apartment blocks bombings in Moscow and Volgodonsk, to the commission for investigation of this event, where they concluded that it was the late Ugryumov on behalf of the FSB who had supervised the bombing campaign. [26], and an interview with historian Yury Felshtinsky who had passed the letter to the newspaper, where he alleged that Ugryumov had committed suicide, possibly pressurized by the FSB [27][28][29][30][31].