By Jeff Stein and Patricia Ravalgi
If Russian intelligence were a baseball team, it would be the Houston Astro, good, powerful, even lethal, but cheaters who broke the rules in a game already known to bend them. And they almost got away with it.
“I like this analogy,” says Marc Polymeropoulos, a retired former CIA clandestine operations officer. “I’d add that Houston players were never penalized either, right? They lost their coach and their GM, but the players went down for free. Does that sound familiar to you?”
Whatever the analogy, Russian spies took to the field as injured athletes in 2020, achieving big, smart and espionage victories in the West, but they also stumbled upon clumsy assassination plots that further blackened their names in the competitive field of international relations. You would think that the manager would be fired with this record, but again, this team is led by Vladimir Putin. He just doesn’t care.
“What amazes me is Putin’s willingness to risk being caught by such small fry,” says John Sipher, who knows a thing or two about the Russians, having been head of the CIA station in Moscow. All of these goals were not “a real threat to Putin.”
He noted that the opposition figure, Alexei Navalny, “gets 3% support” for all of Russia, but last August the FSB, Moscow’s internal security body, tried to poison him with the nervous agent Novichok.
It’s a pattern: two years ago, the GRU, Russia’s small military intelligence agency, sent death squads to liquidate a coating agent, Serge Skripal, with Novichok. (He nearly killed him.) In February, Bulgarian authorities accused in absentia three Russian agents of trying to poison a Sofia arms dealer and two associates in 2015. Last year Moscow used older methods to eliminate a Chechen separatist fighter in Germany: a bullet in the head on a Berlin street.
It’s Murder Inc. with firearms and poison: no layers, no daggers, thank you very much.
Douglas London, another retired senior CIA official, says the successes “serve a purpose and there is little cost.”
“He likes the sexist image,” he adds. “It’s just old school Russian.”
“He’s finished, but he hasn’t paid any,” Sipher said SpyTalk.
Well, let’s say it’s a price Putin can live on: a bitch slap on the governments he’s 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, a few for political interference. In a quality Hollywood hoax, two Russian “diplomats” were expelled from Prague this year after it was found that they had planted a false story in a local media outlet that said another Russian — a rival to his embassy, as it turned out, he was plotting to poison Czech officials. In a comic climax, Moscow reacted with great hesitation to the PNG. In neighboring Slovakia, three Russians were expelled in retaliation for Moscow to obtain fake Slovak visas to enter Germany for the Berlin assassination.
The same happened in other places where Moscow agents were apparently caught under attack for espionage or political intrigue.
“What amazes me is Putin’s willingness to risk being caught by such small fry.”
– John Sipher, former head of the CIA station in Moscow
Last week in Colombia, for example, two suspected Russian intelligence officers were expelled for gathering information about the “energy and mineral commodities industry” and for “trying to recruit sources in the city of Cali.”
A week earlier, Bulgaria gave 72 hours to a Russian diplomat to leave the country “after prosecutors alleged he had been involved in espionage since 2017,” according to Reuters, citing the foreign ministry.
On December 10, the Netherlands expelled “two suspected Russian diplomats” for addressing its “high-tech sector with a significant 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 aimed at an Oslo consultancy in shipbuilding, renewable energy and the oil and gas industry. A week later, Austria expelled a Russian “diplomat” who had allegedly been involved for years in economic espionage in a technology company, aided by an Austrian citizen. Russia responded in kind.
Moscow became more seriously involved in Guyana, in northern South America, according to a report released in March from its capital. “A Russian, a Russian-American and a Libyan were expelled accused of trying to” interfere in the electoral process at the request “of an opposition party through a” conspiracy to take advantage of the Electoral Commission’s computer system of Guyana “.
Ukraine, on the other hand, did not settle for ripping off Russian agents. In a virtual war with Moscow since its invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine just this week “closed four intelligence networks and detained 11 Russian intelligence agents, three of whom were involved in sabotage attempts and terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure facilities, “Kyiv announced.” Another FSB agent was detained in the Luhansk region. He tried to hand over to the foreign side the secret documentation on the Neptune missile system developed by the Ukrainian defense industry, “he added. They continue to investigate counterintelligence.
Ukrainian agents in Russia, meanwhile, remained immersed in U.S. politics, particularly the campaign by Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani to tarnish 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 fabricate charges against Hunter Biden. “Derkach … has been an active Russian agent for more than a decade, maintaining close connections with Russian intelligence services,” the Treasury found. Giuliani is reportedly being investigated in Manhattan for “potentially illegal profits from his work with” Soviet-born American businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman “in a Ukrainian natural gas business.”
Washington had little recourse, except sanctions or indictments in absentia, against Russian agents in the Hunter Biden affair and other, even more, flagrant attacks on the U.S. in 2020, as all perpetrators were out of the reach of the forces. of the American order.
In October, for example, the United States charged six current and former members of Russia’s military intelligence agency with “allegedly carrying out some of the world’s most destructive piracy attacks from 2015 to 2019.” , including the destruction of Ukraine’s power grid and damage of nearly $ 1 billion. to three American companies. ” All defendants are outside the US
Similarly, U.S. officials continue to order legal options to deal with the recently discovered massive Russian intrusion into the computer systems of several federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Finance, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and Commerce. “Although U.S. officials believe that an entity linked to Russia or Russian individuals are responsible for the attacks, they have not yet finalized their appointment on the perpetrators,” a senior administration official told CNN.
More outrage came from the Russian embassy: “another unfounded attempt by the American media to blame Russia for hacker attacks on U.S. government agencies.”
Two years ago, in reaction to Skripal poisoning, the United States and 28 other countries expelled more than 150 Russian officers from their shores. Washington alone expelled 60 Russians, including 12 intelligence officers from the Moscow mission at UN headquarters in New York, and closed the Russian consulate in Seattle.
In 2020, Putin seemed a little more careful with foreign assassinations. Or maybe it was just a coincidence, the lack of timely goals.
The Russian strongman shows no sign of a change of direction. Quite the contrary: he has been deceiving his intelligence services. Beginning in 2020 last January, its SVR chief held an unprecedented ceremony to honor several agents who had served with distinction around the world.
Putin has good reason to blow his chest, according to former CIA officials with long histories fighting the Moscow Center: Trump has not made Russia pay any substantial price for his excesses.
“It’s not that the Russians are so good, but over the past four years, the political climate has prevented the U.S. intelligence community from harnessing its capabilities and advantages, as the White House provides the Kremlin with the maximum protection against the consequences, “said London, who recently retired from a 34-year career in the CIA’s clandestine services division, said SpyTalk.
“There are no rules on espionage, although it is an internationally recognized norm,” says Dan Hoffman, who in addition to directing the CIA station in Moscow led large-scale espionage campaigns against Russia in Europe. and other places. “Putin doesn’t play without rules, just the most he can get.”
“Either he’s just a KGB thug or he’s really more scared than we think.” adds Sipher. “I tend to think he just keeps seeing the world as a Soviet Czech and that’s what they do.”
Co-edited with SpyTalk, where Jeff Stein leads a 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 for full access to the newsletter and website.