A radical shake-up of Russia’s security agencies will see the mostly-domestic FSB merged with the country's foreign intelligence service (the SVR), forming a new centralised organisation called the Ministry of State Security (MGB) that resembles the size and scope of the original KGB, according to a story in the Russian newspaper Kommersant.

Although the Russian government would not confirm the report, it also did not deny it. Kommersant reports that the two agencies will be merged before Russia's next presidential election in March 2018.

An article in Politico.eu says that the new MGB, which recycles a name used for the Soviet intelligence agency from 1946 to 1953, will eventually employ 250,000 people, as many as the old KGB at the height of its power, but no source is given for that information.

This fusion of state agencies would represent something of a reversal for President Putin, himself a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years. In the past, he has sought to eliminate possible rivals by dividing powerful organisations into smaller units. Both the FSB and SVR were originally formed in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the KGB.

"Putin seems to have put that divide-and-rule policy into reverse and is instead consolidating power into a pair of super-agencies." Politico writes, "the National Guard—created in July, that united internal security troops under the Kremlin’s control—and now the new Ministry of State Security. Putin will personally control these super-agencies."

As well as boosting Putin's power over the intelligence agency, another driver of the change seems to be a continuing failure to rein in widespread corruption in the security forces and Interior Ministry, as explored in a recent article in the Russian-language newspaper Free Press. The hope seems to be that the new structures and Putin's direct involvement will lead to more success in tackling this serious problem.

Expanded online activities could well be an important part of the expanded MGB. At a time when intelligence agencies around the world are beefing up their digital powers, and the UK aims to bring in the Investigatory Powers Act to legalise government surveillance and "equipment interference"—hacking—anywhere in the world, it would be surprising if the newly-constituted MGB did not press Putin for extra resources to do the same.