In Putin's game of thrones, there is one man to watch

Sergei Borisovich Korolev, the first deputy director of the FSB, is reported to have emerged a winner after the Russian president's recent Kremlin reshuffle. Kim Sengupta reports

- Kim Sengupta

As a game of thrones in Russia's security hierarchy unfolds in the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin ringing the changes, the rise of one man is being watched with keen interest by Western intelligence agencies. Sergei Borisovich Korolev, the first deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), is said to have been given a key role as Moscow gets into battle order for the clandestine conflict underway against the West.

In a series of sudden moves this week, Sergei Shoigu was replaced as defence minister by the deputy prime minister, Andrei Belousov. Shoigu took over as secretary of the Security Council from Nikolai Patrushev, who was demoted to overseeing the country's shipbuilding capabilities. Putin's former bodyguard, Alexei Dyumin, the governor of the Tula region, failed to get the defence portfolio he had been tipped for but became a senior aide to the president instead.

No official announcements have been made about the security and intelligence services. But, according to a number of European officials, Korolev, whose appointment to the FSB post was personally signed off by Putin, is among a group of senior intelligence officers tasked with taking operations forward.

This week, Anne Keast-Butler, the director of GCHQ, became the latest security official to warn of the Russian threat, using her first keynote speech to stress that the Kremlin is encouraging and directing hackers to target British and Western targets.