Former FSB officer tells how he escaped from Russia in the belly of a dead cow

Dmitry Senin. Video screenshot: telegraph / YouTube

Dmitry Senin's career began in 2001 in Kalmykia. The 22-year-old university graduate joined the FSB on the wave of the fight against terrorism. Thanks to successful work in the North Caucasus, he quickly advanced through the ranks, receiving the Suvorov Medal and the Medal "For Courage" (the latter - personally from Vladimir Putin). In the mid-2000s, he was transferred to Moscow, to the elite "M" department, which dealt with corruption in law enforcement agencies, and then to the FSB Control Directorate. His career was on the rise, and he expected to become an FSB general.

According to Senin, problems began in 2016 when operational information landed on his desk. The man does not disclose details of who or how he received it, but says he learned about a suspicious elite apartment in Moscow connected to a high-ranking police officer. He passed the information to his colleagues. The subsequent raid found $120 million in cash in the apartment — one of the largest cash seizures in modern Russian history.

It was reported that the apartment was registered to the sister of Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, deputy head of the Main Directorate for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Even more money was found in his car.

Zakharchenko was later sentenced to 13 years in prison for bribery and obstruction of justice. But Senin claims that after this, internal FSB investigations began to identify who had passed on the information about the apartment.

In February 2017, according to the man, he received a warning that he was about to be arrested. The same day, Senin left his wife and three children in Moscow and fled to Georgia with a fake passport. That evening, colleagues came to search his house.

Russian authorities accused Senin of creating a corrupt group with Zakharchenko that engaged in large-scale protection rackets for businesses, and also claimed they were allegedly related. Senin denies all of this.

Later, the prosecutor's office accused the former FSB officer of helping Zakharchenko get a high position in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and acting as an intermediary between Zakharchenko and one of the people from whom he received bribes. In 2023, Senin was заочно (in absentia) sentenced to nine years in prison.

The situation was particularly dangerous because Senin had the highest level of access to classified information in Russia – access to "special importance" materials (this is above "top secret"). Such employees cannot simply leave the country, so his escape from Moscow could have been perceived as defecting to the West.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Senin insists that this was not the case. He claims he did not hand over secrets to Western intelligence agencies and did not receive assistance from them. On the contrary, according to his version, he even returned to Russia to show that he was not a defector like Sergei Skripal or Alexander Litvinenko.

The Telegraph writes that after Senin's disappearance, Russian special services did indeed organize a search for him in Europe. Investigations by Austrian special services mention former Austrian counter-intelligence officer Egisto Ott, who is accused of working for Russian intelligence. According to the case materials, he searched for Senin in Croatia and used police databases to track him.

Return to Russia

According to Senin, while abroad, he realized that he was being hunted and that his "time was running out." Therefore, he decided to use the FSB's logic against them and... returned to Russia.

The return was supposed not only to confuse his pursuers, who would never have thought to look for a "traitor" inside the country, but also to prove to his friends and leadership in the FSB that he was not a defector.

As the publication writes, the former FSB officer's return to Russia is confirmed by the materials of the criminal case against Ott, but the next part of Senin's story is difficult to verify. He claims to have lived in Moscow under cover for years, trying to clear his name.

Senin showed the editors a photograph from that time, in which he is hard to recognize: he looked like an overweight heavy metal fan with shoulder-length hair.

Other disguise methods included a wheelchair, then crutches and faking a limp. To avoid exposing himself, he could not return to his wife and children, who remained in Moscow.

Senin claims he had friends in the FSB who knew about his return and helped him keep in touch with loved ones. He couldn't return to his family, but secretly watched his children near their school and passed them letters through dead drops.

Later, he concluded that it was pointless to resist the system. Analyzing Zakharchenko's case, Senin concluded that Zakharchenko was only a custodian of money from a gigantic corruption scheme involving the most powerful people in Putin's Russia. He now believes that the millions in the apartment were intended to be transferred to the very top of the country at the end of each year.

Ingenious Escape Plan

Thus, he began planning a second escape. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 complicated the task.

Authorities strengthened border security. The steppe border with Kazakhstan, which he intended to use, was now controlled by thermal imagers. However, Senin came up with an unusual plan.

According to his account, strict rules exist in Russia for the disposal of dead animals — cows that have died from diseases. This is expensive and slow. Therefore, many farmers near the border with Kazakhstan simply dump carcasses with tractors into the "no man's land" between the countries. Senin decided to leave the country inside the body of one such cow.

The man does not specify how he got from Moscow to the border. But organizing the operation, which relied on a network of smugglers, took two months.

On a cold September day in 2022, he put on a gas mask and a rubber suit to protect himself from the smells, and climbed inside the cow's carcass. He was additionally wrapped in foil to hide his body heat from border guard cameras. The timing was perfect: autumn meant no snow, but it was cold enough to avoid flies and maggots.

Local smugglers loaded the carcass with Senin inside onto a tractor, transported it across the border, and dumped it in a ravine used as an animal graveyard. According to the man, he lay in the cow for an hour, waiting for the border guards to lose interest in the area.

Afterward, he climbed out of the carcass, crawled several hundred meters across the field, and reached a meeting point where a former Kazakh KGB officer was waiting for him on a motorcycle.

Life in Europe

From Kazakhstan, Senin flew to Montenegro and requested political asylum. However, he was arrested at Russia's request via Interpol. He spent five months in prison until Montenegrin authorities refused to extradite him to Moscow in February 2023, recognizing the persecution as political.

The materials of the Austrian special services, reviewed by The Telegraph journalists, note: "It cannot be entirely ruled out that the request from Monaco also serves to ascertain the whereabouts of Dmitry Senin in the interests of the Russian Federation."

Senin settled in Montenegro with his family, but the threats continued. According to him, European special services warned him twice about the danger. A GPS tracker was found on his wife's car, and his passport details were published in the local press.

In 2024, he again left his family and moved to another European country, the name of which The Telegraph does not disclose for security reasons.

In November of the same year, on the day of Ott's trial in Austria, rumors appeared in the Russian press that Senin had been killed in a criminal shootout in Montenegro. According to the man, this was done to provoke him into making contact and revealing his location. However, he did not succumb to the provocation, even allowing his family to believe in his death.

Almost simultaneously, Interpol received a second arrest warrant for Senin. This time not from Russia, but from Monaco. The former FSB officer is convinced that this request was initiated by Russian agents in the principality. As a member of the organization, Russia has access to Interpol databases, which would allow the FSB to find him if he were detained.

Senin now lives underground, waging a legal battle and constantly looking over his shoulder, fearing Russian assassination squads. Despite this, he still hopes to one day return to Russia.

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