Russian Intelligence Services: News & Discussion

WSJ learned about the call of the head of the CIA Naryshkin because of the actions of Prigozhin, 06.30.2023.

WSJ: CIA chief Burns said in a call to Naryshkin that the United States was not involved in Prigozhin's actions.

CIA Director Burns called the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Naryshkin, to assure that the United States was not involved in the actions of Prigozhin, writes WSJ. Burns called the events an internal affair of Russia, the interlocutors of the publication said.

The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), William Burns, this week contacted the director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, after the events of June 23-24 and assured Moscow that Washington was not involved in what was happening, The Wall Sreet Journal reports, citing people familiar with question of officials.

“The US was not involved. This is an internal Russian affair, ”one of the newspaper’s interlocutors cited Burns’s message. Other details of the conversation could not be established.

The White House declined to comment on this information. “We are not going to go into the details of individual diplomatic discussions,” its spokesman said.

The publication notes that this conversation is considered a contact between the two countries at the highest level. The article says that Burns' call is part of a US strategy aimed at making it clear to the Russian leadership that the US has nothing to do with what happened and does not seek to escalate tensions in Russia.

“Privately, U.S. officials say they are seeking to prevent the Kremlin from blaming Russia’s external enemies for the insurgency and its consequences,” the story reads.

https://www.rbc.ru/politics/01/07/2023/649f523c9a79478025a87dff

Russia has taken Western intelligence to extremes, by Evgeny Krutikov for VZGLYAD. 08.04.2023.

Counterintelligence closed the CIA and MI6 channels for recruiting Russian citizens.

Cases of direct appeals from Western intelligence agencies to Russian citizens have become more frequent - they are called to become traitors, to cooperate, to sell their Motherland. This was noted by the head of British intelligence MI6 Richard Moore, and representatives of the CIA, and so much so that the Russian Foreign Ministry proposed to act in a mirror and promote the work of citizens of Western countries for Russian intelligence. What does all this have to do with real intelligence work?

The public appeals of foreign intelligence services to Russian citizens for betrayal are something that has never been seen before. Most likely, this orgy was the result of another misunderstanding by the West of what is happening in Russian society.

Calculation for the "fifth column"

Western intelligence really believes that the “fifth column” in Russian society is now somehow especially strong and is just waiting to help the collective West in some way. And for ideological reasons. Why they have such an impression is also understandable. This is the result of the simplification of the work of Western experts and the excessive indoctrination of analytical work. The CIA and MI6 sincerely believe that all progressive humanity is striving for a liberal system of values, and they adjust the texture to this position, regardless of the realities of a particular country.

For many years, Western intelligence agencies have considered refugees and verbally aggressive emigrants from the Russian Federation as important experts on Russia, who greatly exaggerate their role and influence in Russian society. And if you listen to some participants in the gatherings in Vilnius and Warsaw for a long time, then you can believe that it is enough to record a colorful video - and the traitors will tumble down to communicate with the CIA and MI6.

Traitors of all times are always reverent about the name of what they betrayed. At the level of everyday psychology, it sounds like this: not a single traitor has ever publicly admitted to any ordinary (base) reasons for working in favor of foreign intelligence services. That he just wanted money, fame, or that he was just being blackmailed. In Soviet times, every single one of them publicly claimed that they were fighting against the totalitarian regime. And now, Western propaganda draws up calls for betrayal in the wrapper of the "struggle for the right Russia."

But this is an ideology. The practical component of all these appeals to Russian citizens is negligible. The fact is that the heads of the CIA and MI6 Burns and Moore are good professionals. They understand that: 1) there is never enough information; 2) information of the highest priority is needed, not garbage. Western intelligence calls for betrayal are addressed not to Uncle Vasya and Aunt Field, but to carriers of important information and potential agents of influence.

In private conversations, people familiar with, for example, Burns, say that the CIA greatly laments the fact that the United States has practically no high-ranking defectors or simply representatives of iconic positions in the Russian establishment.

This is the subject of constant discussion within Western intelligence services. At the same time, the CIA video was aimed at middle-level Russian intelligence officers, and Moore's appeal was oriented (read between the lines) at Russian diplomats.

They may object - what about the numerous cases of arrests in Russia of saboteurs, obvious agents of foreign special services. For example, arsonists at military registration and enlistment offices or relay cabinets on the railroad?

However, the massive use by Ukrainian intelligence agencies of Internet recruitment of teenagers, women and pensioners is not at all what Burns and Moore are talking about. Idiot attempts to set fire to military registration and enlistment offices and obtaining political or military information of a strategic nature from the highest echelons of power are fundamentally different plots and methods. The appeals of the CIA and MI6 are addressed to a different audience than the subjects of Ukrainian Internet recruitment. And in communicating with this audience, other methods and schemes are used. And they are in 99% of cases "grandfather", proven for decades.

Counterintelligence created a barrier

The CIA and MI6 long ago announced the imposition of the so-called Moscow Rules on Western diplomats and their affiliated intelligence officials still remaining in the Russian capital. The reduction of residencies to a minimum led Western intelligence agencies to lose control over the already existing agent network, and recruiting someone new became simply impossible.

Under such conditions, one of the opportunities for Western intelligence in Russia was to work with potential “initiators”.

These are the people who know exactly what they are getting into (for a long term of imprisonment) and have sufficient skills to create an undercover communication system in modern Moscow. There may have been attempts to refocus on contacts in the Moscow region or in neighboring areas, which caused a mirror response: the recent restriction for British and American diplomats to move outside the Moscow Ring Road without prior notice.

Roughly speaking, thanks to Russian counterintelligence, the CIA and MI6 have lost the opportunity to find sources of information in Russia (agents, informants, traitors, call it what you want) of their choice. And such a search for informants always requires the work of a whole team that studies both the potential recruitment object, his environment, past and present. As a result, there were appeals from Western intelligence agencies to potential Russian "initiators", who, according to this logic, should themselves go to Western intelligence, and only then, as the stars develop. In other words, the very fact of these appeals means that Western intelligence agencies in their work against Russia have reached the last reserves, to extremes.

How to work with our informants in the West

Can this circuit be mirrored? What if Russia itself starts such recruitment of agents in the West, including in similar ways?

In Western societies, there is certainly a social and / or ideological layer that sympathizes with Russia. Many of these Russian sympathizers feel lost and alone, while the views of others are considered marginal in the Western world. They need our support. But with such people, work is required not so much intelligence services as diplomats - at the level of propaganda of the "Russian World" and the achievements of Russia.

How important these people are precisely as an intelligence tool is a moot point. Mass character is not the main achievement of intelligence activities, but rather its negative side. Too much resources are required to arrange some kind of massive acts of recruitment of everyone who on the Internet opposes the well-known distortions in the development of Western society. You can drown in the flow of garbage information. A matter of paramount importance was and remains the acquisition of strategically important data by classical methods of recruitment, using methods proven over decades.

And one more "mirror" moment. If the CIA and MI6 believe that Russian “initiators” will come to them as a result of their appeals, then who guarantees that they are real? Each of them will have to be tested more strongly than it was before, and this will take an enormous amount of time and resources. Does such a strategy make sense? You can get disinformation, you can dig into clarifications and destroy your own networks and methods. And you can also squander a real "initiator". Exploration is always a multi-level game.

https://vz.ru/world/2023/8/3/1224208.html

FBI director Wray called Russian intelligence a big threat to the US, 09.08.2023.

The director of the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Christopher Wray, called Russian intelligence a great threat to the United States.
He said this at the International Spy Museum in Washington.

“The traditional Russian counterintelligence threat remains significant,” Wray said. He is quoted by The Hill.

At the same time, the FBI director added that the presence of Russian intelligence officers in the United States is “still too large.”

Earlier  , the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that the United States was considering the option of physically eliminating the leaders who came to power in Niger.

https://russian.rt.com/world/news/1200692-rei-razvedka-ssha

How the man who planted explosives for a Russian General Staff colonel was caught, by Evgeniy Krutikov for VZGLYAD. 07.25.2024.

Turkey has detained Yevgeny Serebryakov, a man accused of attempting to kill a Russian General Staff officer, in record time after he fled Russia. He is now due to be extradited to Russia in the near future. How was it possible to locate and detain the fugitive so quickly, how is the interaction between the Turkish and Russian special services organized, and how did a prestigious university student become accused of a serious criminal offence?

The entire operation to identify and capture the suspect took place within 24 hours. CCTV cameras recorded at 2:30 a.m. on July 24 how a young man was placing an object under the bottom of a jeep parked near a house on Sinyavskaya Street in northern Moscow.

The man sat for some time on the playground, filming the mined car with his phone. His face was clearly visible on the surveillance cameras. If we assume that there was some rationality in his actions, then he was not afraid of being "exposed" because he had an escape plan that he considered reliable.

Then he got into a car sharing car and drove to Vnukovo Airport. He bought the tickets in advance and checked in for the flight online. He almost missed the flight, but still flew to Turkey three hours after planting the explosive device. The explosion itself occurred at 6.30 a.m., when the plane with the terrorist was already in the air. According to Interfax sources, the owner of the car is a colonel of the Russian General Staff.

The detectives seized the surveillance cameras in the courtyard of the house, as well as the video recorders of other cars in the parking lot. The identity of the terrorist - he turned out to be Muscovite Yevgeny Serebryakov - was established very quickly. The car, its route and Serebryakov's flight registration details were established. He was promptly arrested in absentia in a Moscow court, since without this it is impossible to forward the arrest request to Interpol. After this, the arrest request was officially sent to Interpol and Turkish law enforcement agencies.

The Turkish side received identification data on the accused approximately an hour after Serebryakov had already passed security at the Bodrum airport. It was not difficult for the Turks to identify him based on the data received from Moscow. The only thing they needed was assistance from the Turkish intelligence service Milli Istihbarat Teskilati, which was directly mentioned in a message on social media by the head of the Turkish Interior Ministry, Ali Yerlikay.

The Turks tracked the car in which Serebryakov left Bodrum airport and soon detained it. The driver of the car was detained along with Serebryakov. His name has not been disclosed, but there is apparently reason to believe that he was not just a taxi driver from the airport, but a person who specifically met Serebryakov and, therefore, was involved in the terrorist attack.

If this is true, then this driver becomes an important figure in the investigation, since he can tell who, when and under what circumstances gave him the task of meeting the terrorist at the Bodrum airport.

This chain of testimony is no less important than the testimony of Serebryakov himself. And apparently, these are not the people who will deny it for long. The main problem may be the number of "gaskets" between the performer and the customers.

It is worth emphasizing that the Turkish side is extremely intolerant of any manifestations of terrorism. The Turks are not interested in any political background of terrorism at all. That is why the interaction between Ankara and Moscow on this issue works so smoothly. There are well-established protocols that allow bureaucracy to be minimized. Both sides instantly exchange legal documents that formalities require. This level of interaction did not develop yesterday, but was developed over the past 15 years after the threat of aggressive jihadism first arose. Russia does not have such a level of coordination of the work of special services as with Turkey, even with some CIS and CSTO countries.

Now investigators have to find out where Serebryakov got the bomb from. The recent arrest in St. Petersburg of a group of people who were engaged in the transit of Ukrainian explosives from Europe gives grounds to believe that there may be several such channels, and that they exist in parallel. They can only be identified operationally or by determining the typical routes and methods of such transit.

Another noteworthy moment was the speed with which investigators in Moscow identified the terrorist from the video footage.

Serebryakov had a foreign passport and traveled abroad several times in recent years (to the Czech Republic, Georgia, Armenia). In addition, the young man was an active supporter of various organizations that are now recognized as extremist. He participated in rallies and clashes with the police in the center of Moscow in 2014, as a result of which he was repeatedly captured on camera not only by the special services, but also by the media. Therefore, there were no particular difficulties in establishing his identity from the video.

The identity of the detainee is also interesting. Yevgeny Serebryakov was born and raised in Uryupinsk in the Volgograd Region, was a good student at school and even received a special scholarship from the governor. "Congratulations to Yevgeny Serebryakov, a student of grade 11 "B" of the MBOU Lyceum. By decision of the regional committee for the appointment of personal scholarships of the Volgograd Region dated September 9, 2011, he was awarded a scholarship from the governor of the Volgograd Region," the website of the educational institution says . According to the portal, Serebryakov also became a prize winner in various history competitions.

And so in 2012, Serebryakov comes to Moscow and enrolls in the Higher School of Economics. He studies well and goes to Prague on a student exchange program. He tries to fit into the environment he came from Uryupinsk: he rents an apartment in the very expensive Presnensky district, gets cats and for some reason goes to services in a Catholic church.

Before us is, to some extent, a typical story of a provincial who came to Moscow and found himself in the specific student environment of that time.

He found himself surrounded by people among whom bragging about oppositionism, showing off participation in rallies or banned extremist organizations was a demonstration of success. At that time, some universities could even bully students who did not share such views. Anyone who finds themselves in an environment where such behavior is considered a success will most often imitate it. Hence the passion for anarchism/leftism/libertarianism (underline as appropriate), cats and demonstrative initiation into Catholicism, which is rare for Muscovites.

Add to this an internship in the Russophobic capital of Europe, Prague, and trips to Georgia and Armenia, which are filled with various anti-Russian NGOs. And now the young man begins to participate in rallies, and ten years later we have a terrorist who writes his name in social network profiles in Ukrainian and plants bombs under the cars of Russian officers. One cannot help but conclude that we are facing a direct consequence of the atmosphere that developed 10-15 years ago in a number of universities in the country.

Surely, it was not only the atmosphere that had an effect, but also some of Serebryakov's personality traits. Not all of the students of that time went as far as he did. But the fact is that at one time in our country, among the youth, a small but unbalanced group of people of a certain ideological platform formed, requiring preventive attention from counterintelligence. As Serebryakov's case showed, in this environment, individuals capable of terrorist acts may appear.

Prevention does not mean repression, but rather covert monitoring of the social activity of representatives of a certain risk group. This is also a form of combating terrorism. Successful cooperation with Turkish colleagues is wonderful. But preventing the crime itself is priceless. Perhaps this is the main lesson of the effectively conducted investigation of the terrorist act in the north of Moscow.

https://vz.ru/society/2024/7/25/1279175.html

Curiously enough, it's Kommersant who provides the most information about the car bombing.

The man accused of blowing up the car was detained when he came to get a Ukrainian passport, 07.26.2024.

The Investigative Committee of Russia (SKR) has charged the detained Yevgeny Serebryakov in the case of the car bombing in the north of Moscow. During interrogation, the man confirmed that he committed the bombing for monetary compensation and Ukrainian citizenship. According to him, his passport was supposed to be brought to the place in Bodrum, Turkey, where he was detained.

Yevgeny Serebryakov was detained yesterday in Turkey. He was taken to Moscow that night. In footage published by the FSB, the man said that he was promised $10,000–20,000 for blowing up a Russian officer's car.

During interrogation, the accused stated that he understood why he was detained. According to him, his handlers paid him for expenses when planning the crime. He said that he acted on the instructions of a person he had seen once in his life in Istanbul, who introduced himself as Ilya. Presumably, this person is from Ukraine and is an SBU employee, said the defendant in the criminal case.

The explosion of a Toyota Land Cruiser on Sinyavskaya Street in Moscow occurred on July 24. A Defense Ministry officer and his wife were injured. The man's feet were blown off by the explosion. The suspect was detained the same day in Bodrum, Turkey. The Zamoskvoretsky Court arrested him in absentia. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation charged Yevgeny Serebryakov under paragraph 3 of Article 30, Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (attempted murder of two persons) and Part 1 of Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (illegal trafficking in explosive devices).

As Kommersant wrote , the investigation immediately checked the version about the involvement of Ukrainian special services in the explosion. Kiev denied this, claiming that the explosion was connected with faulty gas equipment.

https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6852763

The exchanged foreign agents became enemies for their own, by Igor Maltsev, writer, journalist, publicist for VZGLYAD. 08.09.2024.

From the moment the mega-bright-faced exchanged criminals arrived under the canopy of the EU streams, it became clear that two bears in one den would not get along. The discrepancy between the political time of those who sat in front of the "YouTube" and those who sat in the cell turned out to be too obvious.

Today is a holiday for the kids, the pioneers are rejoicing. Although the holiday was a few days ago, and the pioneers are rejoicing in a strange way. Moreover, the faces on YouTube are noticeably distorted - and the vocabulary is changing. After all, on the first day after the exchange - oh-oh-oh! - they exchanged "killers and spies" for light-faced gods who came down from heaven. Literally - down the gangway.

At the same time, all our fugitive scum immediately got caught calling Russian intelligence officers “spies.” But this is a marker: “intelligence officers” are always ours, “spies” are always the enemy’s. A person who calls a Russian intelligence officer a “spy” – who is he for? That’s right. He signs that he is for the enemy. Here, even foreign agent status is not allowed, but it’s better to immediately take arms and go to the outskirts. About the outskirts will come a little later.

It was especially interesting about the "killer from Tiergarten" who "killed a Georgian." This is said every day by people who, even in Moscow, had patriotic drool running down their chins every time the Israeli secret services killed another Iranian scientist. And now even more so - only the patriotic drool has turned into a bloody foam of delight. "These (Iranians, Hamas, Arabs) understand only force!" they shout, carefully avoiding Israeli mobilization. And not one, I emphasize, not one uttered the words "liquidation of a terrorist." For them, a Chechen terrorist is one of their own, a relative. Since the first Chechen war on NTV.

But, in general, why didn’t we know about these people who quickly moved to support European funds of implicit financing?

But then an event like "Dead Season" with Banionis happened. Good movie, good event. Exchange .

And before the newly arrived heroes of the liberal front at war with their own homeland had time to change into prison uniform for the second time (although they were flying out as civilians, by the way), which says a lot about them, the event itself began to be torn to pieces by those who have been here in Europe for a long time and well-fed. "This was invented (and I a little) by Hristo Grozev*!" - M. Pevchikh* rubs it into the public. And there are more and more such authors of the exchange. Victory has many fathers, and only defeat is an orphan.

And the second day came.

But only from the moment of the arrival of the mega-light-faced Yashin* and Kara-Murza* under the canopy of the EU streams, it became clear that two bears in one den do not get along, as General Lebed aptly put it. At least because one bear still has summer, while the other already has winter and hibernation. The discrepancy between the political time of those who sat in front of the "YouTube" and those who sat in the cell turned out to be too obvious.

After all, all these people were presented with a fait accompli - the heroic Kara-Murza himself is coming, whom the regime has already killed five times, and he is a Phoenix. The heroic municipal deputy Yashin is coming, who they started calling the second Navalny in advance. The chief apostle of the Alyosha church. Nelson Mandela is now white and there are now two of him. "We defeated Putin in an unequal fight with the regime, because we have the truth, the US State Department and the Federal Reserve System on our side."

But, having left one cell, it seems the heroic fighters ended up in another: there are already the kingpins (that's how it should be written in Germany) sitting on their bunks, grinning with their gold teeth and saying "Come in," while they themselves think: "Well, what are you doing here? We were sitting there just fine." And this whole cell is listening to your chatter and wondering: where are you going to screw up, my dear?

And exactly. Navalny-Two-Navalny Yashin, from the point of view of the bosses, carried out sheer heresy, that supposedly something needs to be done with peace agreements so that people don’t die.

Despite his status as the future leader of the bright world, they immediately started hitting him on the head. Because this "Russian opposition" can have only one position, and that is victory over Putin on the battlefield - a complete victory for Ukraine and entry into the Kremlin on Ukrainian bayonets. To the last Ukrainian.

Yashin turned out to be smart and exactly a few hours later in the morning he adjusted his position and declared that, of course, there could be no talk of any reconciliation. "I apologize to everyone who was offended by my words."

Oh, with such flexible principles he will definitely be the leader of PRB (Beautiful Russia of the Future). But this did not save him, as well as the Holy Apostle of the Church Navalny-Browder Kara-Murza Jr. First, the Ukrainians walked over them with their boots, then the pro-Ukrainians with the Israeli darkon.

The complaint is still the same - why did Russian politicians who chose freedom not kneel down before the people of Ukraine with enough skill? Why do they carry this heresy about not all Russian people needing to be strangled? Because... listen to all this "Logoped TV", which broadcasts 24/7 and convinces the Russian people to go and kill themselves against the wall . Including babies and pets.

Naturally, Vladimir Kara-Murza with his “Punish the scoundrels, but leave the country alone” is completely out of place here.

The third pseudo-apostle Pivovarov* also got into trouble with the pro-Ukrainian public for the phrase “Donating to the Armed Forces of Ukraine is out of the question.”

Some discrepancy between the internal state of the newly arrived PRB apostles and the inhabitants of this entire European chamber has emerged. But this is temporary. And here we look at how the thimbles move.

The arrivals found nothing better to do than to try to portray themselves as even greater victims of the regime than they had been before their arrival. It was time for amazing stories. It turned out that literally every one of them, including the crazy "artist", was expecting... to be shot. "When the officers burst into Kara Murza's cell (!), he decided that he was being taken to be shot." They all tell this story on every corner, trying to knock a sympathetic face out of the pro-Ukrainians.

And then the famous embezzler of donations Osechkin* comes out and shouts: “How come they didn’t ‘torture’? They should have tortured!” – so much so that even Madame Latynina is surprised.

That is, they were tortured, shot, but thanks to the heroism of their comrades, they paved their way to freedom.

And then the boring everyday life will begin. New money will have to be allocated for the new arrivals, they will have to be integrated into the structures, thank God, all of them, except for the artist, have "normal citizenship". Everything will be fine. Everything will be fine.

Just don't call them "Russian politicians".

The only thing Russian about them is their apartment in Moscow, earned with the bloody sweat of a traitor.

*An individual performing the functions of a foreign agent.

https://vz.ru/opinions/2024/8/9/1281133.html