By Jeff Stein and Patricia Ravalgi
If Russian intelligence were a baseball team, it would be Houston Astro – good, strong, even lethal, but the cheaters who broke the rules in a game already known for their bending. And they escaped quite a bit.
“I like this analogy,” says Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA clandestine operations officer. “I would add that Houston players have never been penalized either, right? They lost their manager and GM, but the players escaped without a draw. Sound familiar? “
Whatever the analogy, Russian spies have entered the field like bruised athletes in 2020, achieving big, clever victories in espionage in the West, but also stumbling over clumsy murder plots that have blackened their name on the competitive field of international relations. You would think that the manager would be fired with such a record, but again, this team is led by Vladimir Putin. He just doesn’t care.
“What surprises me is Putin’s willingness to risk being caught on such small seedlings,” said John Sipher, who knows a thing or two about the Russians as head of the CIA station in Moscow. All of these targets were not “a real threat to Putin.”
Opposition figure Alexei Navalny said he was “receiving 3% support” across Russia, but in August last year the FSB, Moscow’s internal security body, tried to poison him to death with nerve agent Novichok.
It’s a model: two years ago, GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency, sent death squads to liquidate a turncoat agent, Serge Skripal, with Novichok. (Almost killed him.) In February, Bulgarian authorities charged three Russian agents in absentia with attempting to poison a Sofia arms dealer and two associates in 2015. Last year, Moscow used older methods to eliminate a fighter. Chechen separatist in Germany – a bullet to the head of a street in Berlin.
It’s Murder Inc. with weapons and poison – no clothes, no dagger, thank you very much.
Douglas London, another former CIA retiree, says the hits “have a purpose and the costs are low.”
“He likes the macho image,” he adds. “He’s just old-school Russian.”
“It’s over the line, but it didn’t pay any price for anything,” Sipher said SpyTalk.
Well, let’s say it’s a price Putin can live on: a slap from the governments he has offended, in the form of expulsions and sanctions. A SpyTalk review – inspired by Rob Lee, a doctoral student at Kings College London – found that 14 Russian spies were publicly expelled from seven nations in 2020, most for espionage, some for political interference. In a Hollywood-style prank, two Russian “diplomats” were expelled from Prague this year after it was discovered that they had planted a false story in a local press saying that another Russian – a rival in their embassy, as proved to be – plots to poison Czech officials. In a comedy climax, Moscow reacted with great doubt to PNG. In neighboring Slovakia, three Russians were expelled in retaliation for Moscow obtaining false Slovak visas to enter Germany for the Berlin assassination.
The same happened in other places where Moscow’s agents were apparently caught red-handed in espionage or political intrigue.
“What surprises me is Putin’s willingness to risk being caught on such small fry.“
– John Sipher, former head of the CIA station in Moscow
Just last week in Colombia, for example, two suspected Russian intelligence officers were expelled for allegedly collecting information about the “energy and mineral products” and for “trying to recruit sources in the city of Cali.”
One week earlier, Bulgaria gave a Russian diplomat 72 hours to leave the country “after prosecutors claimed he had been involved in espionage since 2017,” according to Reuters, citing the foreign ministry.
On December 10, the Netherlands expelled “two alleged Russian diplomats” for targeting “its high-tech sector with a substantial network of sources,” according to the BBC. The expelled Russians, he said, were accredited diplomats working at the Russian Embassy in The Hague.
Similarly, in August, Norway expelled a Russian “diplomat” involved in espionage who was advising Oslo on shipbuilding, renewable energy and the oil and gas industry. One week later, Austria expelled a Russian “diplomat” who had been involved for years in economic espionage at a technology company, helped by an Austrian citizen. Russia responded in kind.
Moscow has become more involved in Guyana, in northern North America, according to a March report in its capital. “A Russian, a Russian-American and a Libyan have been expelled on charges of trying to ‘intervene in the electoral process at the behest’ of an opposition party, through a ‘conspiracy to enter the computer system of the Guyana Electoral Commission.’
Ukraine, on the other hand, was not satisfied with the start of the Russian agents. In a virtual war with Moscow since the invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine just this week “shut down four intelligence networks and Eleven Russian intelligence agents were detained, three of whom were involved in attempted sabotage and terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure, “Kiev said. “Another FSB agent was detained in the Luhansk region. He tried to hand over to the foreigner the secret documentation regarding the Neptune missile system developed by the Ukrainian defense industry “, she added. Other counterintelligence investigations are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Ukrainian agents have continued to meddle in US policy, especially in the campaign of Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to smash Joe Biden’s son Hunter. In September, the Treasury Department said it would sanction Ukrainian Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian parliament, for conspiring with Giuliani to press charges against Hunter Biden. “Derkach … has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close ties with Russian intelligence services,” the Treasury said. Giuliani allegedly investigated in Manhattan for “potentially illegal gains from his work with” American businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, born in the Soviets “in a Ukrainian gas business”
Washington has had few remedies, but no sanctions or accusations, against Russian agents in the Hunter Biden affair and other, even more, flagrant attacks on the US in 2020, because all the perpetrators were beyond the power of US law enforcement.
In October, for example, the United States accused six current and former members of Russia’s military intelligence agency of “allegedly carrying out some of the world’s most destructive piracy attacks from 2015 to 2019, including the elimination of Ukraine’s power grid and provocation.” damages of nearly $ 1 billion to three American companies. “All the charges are outside the United States
Similarly, US officials are still sorting out legal options to deal with the massive Russian intrusion recently discovered in the computer systems of several federal agencies, including the Defense, Treasury, Homeland Security, Agriculture and Commerce departments. “While US officials believe that an entity linked to Russia or Russian individuals is responsible for the attacks, they have not yet finalized their designation as to which actors are responsible,” a senior administration official told CNN.
More outrage came from the Russian embassy: “another unfounded attempt by the American press to blame Russia for hacker attacks on US government agencies.”
Two years ago, in response to the Skripal poisoning, the United States and 28 other countries removed more than 150 Russian officials from their shores. Washington alone expelled 60 Russians, including 12 intelligence officers from the Moscow mission at the UN headquarters in New York, and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle.
In 2020, Putin appeared a little more careful about foreign assassinations. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, a lack of timely goals.
The strong Russian man shows no signs of changing course. On the contrary: He cheated his intelligence services. Starting in 2020 last January, its SVR chief organized an unprecedented ceremony to honor several agents who have served with distinction around the world.
Putin has good reason to blow his chest, say former CIA officials with long histories fighting downtown Moscow: Trump has not made Russia pay any substantial price for his excesses.
“It’s not that the Russians are so good, but in the last four years, the political climate has prevented the US intelligence community from capitalizing on its capabilities and advantages, with the White House providing the Kremlin’s supreme coverage against the consequences,” London said. from a 34-year career in the CIA’s Clandestine Services Division, he said SpyTalk.
“There are no rules in espionage, even though it is an internationally recognized norm,” said Dan Hoffman, who, in addition to leading the CIA station in Moscow, has led large-scale espionage campaigns against Russia in Europe and elsewhere. “Putin does not play without rules, but only to the maximum with which he can escape.”
“Either it’s just a KGB bush or it’s really scarier than we think.” adds Sipher. “I tend to think they just continue to see the world as a Soviet checkman, and that’s what they do.”
Co-published with SpyTalk, where Jeff Stein leads an all-star team of veteran investigative reporters, writers and subject matter experts who will take you behind the scenes of the state of national security. Subscribe to have full access to the newsletter and website.