The CEPA (Center for European Policy Analysis) is one of the elite policy analysis institutes in the world, and only the most distinguished experts are invited to contribute. Among them are Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, who probably know more about Russian services than anyone else. Let’s see how they sum up this year’s Russian intelligence-counterintelligence-diversion activities at CEPA’s invitation.
Russian spies and saboteurs are on the offensive in earnest. The year 2024 will be remembered for the launch of a massive campaign of political assassination and sabotage abroad, coupled with increasingly brutal repression at home.
In Russia, Alexei Navalny, Putin’s arch-enemy whose name the Kremlin ruler never dared to utter, died in February in a labor camp north of the Arctic Circle. Whether state agents caused his death intentionally or through negligence, nevertheless, it was murder.
Outside the country, Russian services have escalated tensions by stepping up sabotage and attacks on Russian dissidents and dissidents in Europe. Arson and bombings have become more frequent, and disruptions of transportation systems or destruction of underwater infrastructure have been common this year in continental Europe as well as in the United Kingdom.
In April, German authorities arrested two men of dual German-Russian nationality suspected of plotting to sabotage a military base in Bavaria. In May, three men – two Belarusian and one Polish – were arrested in Poland on charges of arson and sabotage on behalf of Russia.
In March, a warehouse linked to Ukraine was set on fire in Leyton, east London. Police arrested four people on charges including arson and aiding Russian intelligence. The following month, a facility belonging to the British defense, security, and aerospace company BAE in South Wales was set on fire. Russian intelligence services targeted citizens of the European Union, something Soviet intelligence had never dared to do during the Cold War.
The assassination of Russian helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov in Spain in February, six months after he defected to Ukraine, showed that Russian intelligence was capable of eliminating its enemies abroad and that European countries were unprepared for such attacks.
The most egregious action by Russian intelligence was the attempted assassination of a prominent German businessman. In mid-July, the media reported that U.S. and German intelligence had foiled a plot by Kremlin agents to assassinate Amin Papperger, the head of Rheinmetall, a leading German arms manufacturer and a major supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine.
The plot to assassinate Papperger was not the first attack on a Western European citizen by Russian intelligence. During hearings at London’s Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey, a Russian spy cell of Bulgarian nationals living in Britain was exposed as plotting to kidnap a Bulgarian investigative journalist, Christo Grozev, and an exiled Russian journalist, Roman Dobrokhotov.
This shows the Kremlin’s aggressive new 2024 strategy. So is the attempt to capture and extradite Russian musicians who left the country after the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In January, the popular rock band Bi-2 was detained in Thailand by local immigration authorities at the Kremlin’s request for their anti-war activities, which is a criminal offense in Russia. Fortunately, with the intervention of Israeli and Australian authorities, all the musicians were released within 48 hours. Shortly thereafter, they departed for Tel Aviv.
And yet, 2024 proved once again that the capabilities of Russian intelligence are beyond its grasp. It was another year of bloody and costly setbacks. Putin’s main pillar of stability, the FSB, proved once again that it is skilled at repression and assassination but not nearly as proficient at intelligence gathering.
As a counterterrorism agency, the FSB failed to prevent the March Islamic State attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall, which left 145 dead and 551 wounded. As an intelligence agency, the FSB failed to prevent the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region in August – and as the agency charged with protecting Russia’s borders (the Russian border police are part of the FSB).
And on December 17, it failed to protect Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, head of the military’s biological and chemical defense units, from an assassination attempt by Ukrainian agents in Moscow.
In the fall, two deputy ministers in the Ministry of Energy were arrested and detained; a former deputy minister in the Ministry of Transport was arrested; a former head of culture in the Moscow City Council was arrested; and the deputy head of the Ministry of Digital Communications and Development has been in prison since last year. The Ministry of Defense has been the hardest hit, with several senior and mid-level officials detained.
In short, the situation is escalating in the East, and as a direct result, the same is true in the West. Hard times are coming both here and there.
Source: https://cepa.org/article/russias-spies-party-after-a-hectic-year/
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