April 18, 2026

The Second Service of the FSB is the curator of the Russian doping program. It organized attempts on opposition figures, and now is responsible for blocking Runet

Employees of the Second Service of the FSB, which organized poisonings and surveillance of opposition figures, were involved in the Russian doping program. This is reported by The Insider, citing sources. According to the publication, RUSADA forensic expert Dmitry Kovalev, who in 2020 testified in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne against WADA sanctions, is a colonel of the Second Service of the FSB and the common-law husband of Veronica Loginova, the new General Director of RUSADA. "Kovalev is just one of many examples of FSB Second Service employees directly linked to the doping program. Apparently, an entire department in the Directorate for the Protection of the Constitutional System was engaged in this activity," writes The Insider. Kovalev is connected with a broader scheme that emerged after the departure in 2015 of the director of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov, who gave testimony in the US about the scale of the doping program in the Russian Federation. According to The Insider, after that, the program was moved to the "Signal" scientific center, which is associated with the development of poisons, including "Novichok" and epibatidine. The source of the publication claims that the synthesis of poisons and the production of doping were unrelated programs, however, the same scientists using the same equipment could participate in all projects of the "Signal" center. The decision to transfer the doping project to "Signal" was made "at the highest level." Viktor Taranchenko, a chemical weapons specialist whom The Insider identified during the investigation into the poisoning of Skripal, was appointed head of the doping laboratory. The Second Service of the FSB is engaged in the fight against "ideological sabotage." Currently, it monitors activists, handles cases of "extremism," and participates in declaring organizations "undesirable" and "foreign agents." According to media reports, employees of this service were behind the organization of the poisonings of Alexei Navalny and Vladimir Kara-Murza. As The Bell previously established, in 2025, the service became the curator of blocks in the Russian segment of the Internet.