[3][4] He spent the next 28 years working for the KGB, its interim successor the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK), and ultimately the FSB, based in Leningrad/Saint Petersburg for the entire period.

[5] Bortnikov's break came in June 2003, when Sergey Smirnov, chief of the Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Oblast FSB, was sent to Moscow to become the principal deputy to the director of the agency amid the Three Whales Corruption Scandal.

"[6] In May 2007, he was reported to have been implicated in a money laundering case investigated by the Russian Interior Ministry in connection with the murder of the Central Bank Deputy Head Andrey Kozlov.

"[12] Nikita Petrov, a historian who studies the Soviet security services for Memorial, condemned Bortnikov's claims as legal nihilism in an interview with Novaya Gazeta.

[13] Sources say Putin's decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 was influenced by a small group of war hawks around him, including Nikolai Patrushev, Yury Kovalchuk and Alexander Bortnikov.

[2] Konstantine Skorkin, a Russia Expert at the Carnegie Center, told New Voice of Ukraine in an interview that Bortnikov and Patrushev were formed by the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and "believe that a bloc confrontation with the West is a reasonable and correct world order.

[15] Shortly after the 2023 Wagner Group mutiny, Belarus president Lukashenko praised Bortnikov (together with Yunus-bek Yevkurov) for mediating the end of the rebellion.

[23] Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov criticized Russian security services for their "catastrophic incompetence" and the FSB for being "busy with everything except its direct responsibilities – killing their political opponents, spying on citizens and prosecuting people who are against the war."

[29] Together they have one son, Denis Aleksandrovich Bortnikov [Wikidata] (born 19 November 1974), who is deputy director of VTB Bank, the second largest financial institution in Russia.

From November 2004 to May 2008, Bortnikov was a member of the board of directors of Sovcomflot (SCF), Russia's largest shipping company and hydrocarbon transporter.

[30] On 27 July 2015, Novaya Gazeta released an investigative report which claimed Bortnikov, as well as a number of other senior FSB officials, were involved in a land settlement in Moscow's Odintsov district.

[31] According to the newspaper, the group arranged the sale of 4.8 hectares (12 acres) of land on the site of a public kindergarten along the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway (along which elite estates including Vladimir Putin's primary residency at Novo-Ogaryovo lie).

[35] He was additionally sanctioned with an asset freeze and travel ban for his responsibility for the preparation and use of chemical weapons (namely a novichok) in the attempted assassination of Alexei Navalny in 2021.