Vladimir Putin is planning to turn Russia into a “digital concentration camp” where people will be forced to wear "QR code handcuffs", it has been claimed.
The vast majority of people would be "forbidden from leaving their own locality" if the plans come to fruition.
This is intended to coincide with the imposition of martial law and a new round of mobilisation, alleged Telegram channel General SVR.
Most Russians would be barred from leaving the country, as they were in Soviet times when they needed hated “exit visas” to go abroad.
A digital QR colour-coded handcuffing system is under discussion by 70-year-old Putin’s inner circle, it claimed.
It will build on Covid curbs and rebuild Soviet-style repression justified by the war in Ukraine, likely to be imposed early in 2023, according to the report.
The document said: “Along with the introduction of martial law, all Russian citizens will be assigned colour-graded QR codes, where red will mean a ban on leaving the locality where a person lives.”
Some 87% of Russians will be covered by this restriction, forcing them to remain in their own town or city district.
A yellow QR code would mean a “ban” on leaving their region.
Others - including the elite - would have a green QR code meaning they could travel freely inside Russia.
The scheme amounts to “a hybrid of martial law with a Chinese-style digital concentration camp”.
Those who needed to travel more widely for work could get special exemptions from all-powerful bureaucrats in charge of the repression in the back-to-the-future horror, it was claimed.
“Complete control over the country is a long-standing idea of representatives of the security forces of the Soviet ‘school’ of the KGB,” said the report.
“Putin has long wanted to embody something like this, but there was no reason.
“This idea was warmly supported by the Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev.”
Patrushev, 71, a former head of the FSB security service, is seen as Putin’s most influential security henchman.
There are reports is angling to see his son, agriculture minister Dmitry Patrushev, 45, parachuted in as president if Putin becomes too ill to continue in office, amid unconfirmed claims his health is fading.
But such a plan faces a battle for the crown with ambitious Sergei Kiriyenko, 60, Putin’s authoritarian deputy chief of staff who is a former Russian prime minister.
“Putin is ready to turn the country into a concentration camp, the question of whether the country will agree to this remains open,” said the channel, which claims inside sources in the Kremlin.
It has previously claimed Putin will impose martial law and mobilise up to two million including 300,000 with many put to work in factories essential for his war effort.
