A native of St. Petersburg, Sergei Naryshkin, a descendant of the aristocratic Naryshkin household deserved to the Romanov court, the head of the SWR, who has no criminal past behind him, is now counted among the closest ellipse of Putin's trusted and at the same time the most intellectually efficient people surrounded by the Russian president. He besides appears to have been 1 of the fewer advisers to the Russian president who has been critical of analyses produced by the FSB according to which triumph in Ukraine was expected to be a specified formality.