Russia’s spy network has expanded in size and influence since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. According to experts, Russia has become more aggressive in targeting dissenters in foreign nations.
Expansion of Russian Spy Network
The Russian Federal Security Service’s Third Directorate for Military Counterintelligence (DKVR), which spies on the Russian military and regulates defections, is currently the agency’s largest division, security analysts claimed. According to reports, its goal includes spying on one of the world’s largest militaries, down to the unit level.
Reports suggest that even before the latest expansion, the DKVR was vast, with more than 20 of its agents guarding troops at a single small air base in the Kaluga region that housed only six aircraft, according to leaked FSB records from 2012 released on the Russian investigative website Agentura.
WSJ said in its report, “this network of domestic and foreign intelligence agencies has regained its confidence and influence after the chaos at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion.”
“They [Russia] are also increasingly using foreign nationals in operations.” Last year, British authorities arrested five Bulgarians accused of spying for Moscow, including monitoring Russian exiles in London. “To this day in Russia, “sending a Mercader” means dispatching a hit man,” the report stated.
Russia Targeting Dissenters
Further, the report noted that since the invasion of Ukraine, several prominent Russians have died in strange circumstances across three continents. Some were suspected of harbouring politically subversive views, while others may have been involved in routine criminal warfare. Some may have also died due to natural causes.
⚡️Media: Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine found dead in Spain.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) February 19, 2024
Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine in 2023, has been found dead in Spain, Ukrainska Pravda reported on Feb. 19, citing the press service of Ukraine's military intelligence.…
Maksim Kuzminov, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine in August 2023, died in Spain on 13 February. He was allegedly shot six times, and his burned-out car was found nearby.
Six months earlier, Kuzminov, a native of a town on Russia’s North Korean border, defected to Ukraine. After handing over the gunship, he received a $500,000 payment and urged his people to follow his example. “When all this opens up before you, your views will fundamentally change,” Kuzminov stated in an interview filmed and uploaded on YouTube by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry. “You’ll simply discover a world of colours.”
Moscow has not denied killing the pilot. “This traitor and criminal became a moral corpse at the very moment when he planned his dirty and terrible crime,” Russia’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergey Naryshkin, said.
WSJ said that, last month, an independent Russian media outlet reported that Igor Sechin’s son, Putin’s confidant and CEO of oil company Rosneft, died in his luxury Moscow apartment complex, called “Putin’s Friend’s House.”
“Businessmen have been found hanged in London and drowned in Puerto Rico. A ruling-party boss fell from the roof of an Indian hotel and a 46-year-old deputy science minister died of an unexplained illness on a return flight from Cuba,” WSJ reported.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was earlier poisoned with detectable nerve agent Novichok in 2020, and he died suddenly in an Arctic prison colony last month, just as a deal to free him was coming together. The Kremlin has stated that the cause of his death is for medical officials to decide. Nonetheless, US President Joe Biden is convinced of the Kremlin’s culpability in the case. “Make no mistake. Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden told reporters.
⚡️UK charges another suspected Russian spy.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) February 28, 2024
Tihomir Ivanov Ivanchev, 37, is the latest in a group of Bulgarian citizens suspected of espionage for Russia in the U.K.https://t.co/K4zkaq0GbK
West, Russia Engage in Spy War
Since Putin’s invasion, Ukraine and its Western allies have increased their efforts to deplete the Russian state and military by attracting a stream of defectors. The Kremlin, for its part, “has tried to hunt down its turncoats, one after the next, to deter more losses through the morbid power of example.” “The mafia-style assassination of Kuzminov fits into another hidden undercurrent of the new spy war between Russia and the West,” the report stated.
Per the report, in Ukraine, military intelligence formed a 24-hour “I Want to Live” hotline for Russian soldiers who wanted to down their arms and cross over. According to Petro Yatsenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s Prisoners of War Department, more than 260 people quit the ranks through it, while another 26,000 have dialled in, and daily calls briefly increased by 70% after Kuzminov went public in September.
The US Central Intelligence Agency released three videos encouraging Russians, particularly security officers, to work with Washington; reportedly, the videos received tens of thousands of views. The agency claims it would stop making them if they weren’t persuading Russians to come forward.
Similarly, British intelligence has followed the US’ example. “I invite [Russian officials/soldiers] to do what others have already done this past 18 months and join hands with us — our door is always open,” British spy chief Richard Moore said. “Their secrets will always be safe with us.”