Reasons for the degradation of Russian intelligence spies

The work of the Russian secret services in recent years has become an inexhaustible source for memes and anecdotes. We asked Kseniya Kirillova, an expert from the American think tanks The Jamestown Foundation and Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), about the reasons for the blatant absence of professionalism of intelligence and counterintelligence in a country where there is a real cult of "chekism", and whose president is an offspring from the KGB.

Question: Do you think that the Russian secret services are really as unprofessional as it is commonly believed today, or are we only aware of some superficial cases designed to hide the rest of the quite competent work?

Answer: In fact, it is quite dangerous to underestimate any special service, and the Russian FSB and SVR still have quite a lot of experience from the school of the old KGB. I have no doubt that specific operations can still be successful for the Russians today. This is especially true of the activities of hackers, various subversive "information operations" aimed at destabilizing other countries, or bribing foreign politicians. However, in general, the Russian special services are really degrading, and this is manifested at all levels.

When it seemed that the sacramental “Petrov and Boshirov” could no longer be surpassed in terms of unprofessionalism, the famous conversation between the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and one of his poisoners from the FSB appeared. Against this background, other failures of Russian intelligence, no longer associated with contract killings, but with the actual “espionage” part, remained almost unnoticed. For example, Russian agents that passed secret information to their handlers were arrested in Italy, Germany and Poland only in the last year.

Things are no better for the Russian counterintelligence, which has been fabricating cases against “Ukrainian saboteurs” for several years now. The first such attempt was made in August 2016, when the Russians tried to accuse “Ukrainian agents” of organizing a shootout in occupied Crimea. At the same time, they did not even notice that the day before, the Crimean officials themselves wrote that the shooting was organized by drunken Russian contract soldiers, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs even sent out an orientation for their capture. The apotheosis of the failed fabrication of criminal cases was the recent scenes of the detention of yet another "saboteurs" who, according to the FSB, were preparing an attempt on the life of Vladimir Solovyov and other Russian propagandists.

The fake caught the attention of former Soviet KGB officers, who noticed "Molotov cocktails" in plastic bottles and an inscription on the book of one of the detainees, where the words "signature is illegible" follow instead of a signature. As the veterans note, "it is impossible to imagine such a level of professional degradation of the special services." According to former officers, this could only happen if the operative who fabricated the “evidence” took the commander’s order to sign illegibly too literally.

Question: What could be the reason for such a truly unimaginable level of stupidity and negligence?

Answer: Let's start with the main one. In modern Russia, the political system itself and the decision-making system are built in such a way that it is practically impossible for normal intelligence and counterintelligence to exist in it. After all, in fact, what is the essence of the work of an intelligence? First of all, to get to the bottom of the truth at any cost. Ideally, an intelligence officer is a person who risks his life and freedom for the sake of the truth that another state would like to hide from him. It’s this truth that has been obtained with such difficulty and repeatedly rechecked, ideally, should form the basis of decision-making by the country's leadership.

In modern Russia, we see a completely opposite situation. Back in 2014, I said that Russia is a country of victorious propaganda, in which the work of not only the media, but also all state institutions, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense and even intelligence, is aimed at being a conductor of state lies, one of the tools legalization of propaganda.

Question: Accordingly, the information obtained in intelligence does not influence decision-making?

Answer: That's right. The example of Russia’s war against Ukraine shows that the source of this decision lies not in the analysis of objective information, but in Putin’s unhealthy, fanatical conviction that the Ukrainian state should not exist, based on his personal ambitions and pseudo-historical constructions divorced from life. All other reasons for the invasion are fabricated on the go, constantly contradicting each other. In fact, the goal of the entire state machine now is to rationalize the crazy views of the Russian president and give them at least some appearance of logic.

This is very clearly seen from how the Russian authorities today cannot decide on the goals of the so-called "special military operation", either declaring the need to protect the "people of Donbass", then proclaiming the fight against US dominance in the world, then talking about the need to prevent some conflict inside Russia. Accordingly, the Russian leadership simply does not need the truth, it is focused on new and new substantiation of its own lies and on the fight against everything that contradicts these lies – including genuine intelligence data. The Kremlin doesn't need “Stirlitz,” it needs justification for its own crazy ideas.

Question: Can a situation arise where the intelligence officers themselves believe Russian propaganda?

Answer: Maybe, but that is what means their unprofessionalism. The essence of the concept of professionalism in this area is precisely the ability to distinguish truth from lies. The layman may believe the propaganda, but the professionals cannot help but know what is really going on. At one time, I said the following phrase: “How does a professional analyst or intelligence officer differ from a dissident in Russia? The dissident believes in the truth, but the professional knows it for sure.” If a person really understands what he is doing, he understands the real picture, and simply sees no reason for himself to participate in madness that he cannot influence.

Question: Speaking about the real picture, is it possible to say that all the problems of today's Russia and its confrontation with the West are entirely the result of its own actions and illusory constructions in Putin's head?

Answer: Of course, the confrontation and competition between states is a completely real phenomenon, and any professional will also confirm this. That is why any country in the world needs special services. However, the goals, methods and scale of this confrontation, as well as the ratio of natural and introduced causes in specific events, in reality are completely different from those in Putin's head.

Simply put, if not for the Russian aggression against Ukraine that began back in 2014, Ukrainians would never have become so hostile to Russia or aspire to join NATO. America, in turn, would never have become so active in helping Ukraine if it had not understood that Russia, through its actions, threatens to destroy the entire existing world order. In addition, Ukraine itself is actively asking for help, and the world community cannot ignore the will of the victim of aggression. In a word, the vast majority of the processes taking place around Russia today are due to the reaction of Ukraine and the Western world to Moscow’s actions themselves.

And this is another major problem for Putin: he is absolutely incapable of understanding the cause-and-effect relationships and the consequences of his actions. You don't have to be a spy to see these consequences – you just need to be a professional in international journalism, geopolitical analytics, or even ordinary sociology. The causes of the current confrontation are visible to the naked eye to any person who in one way or another comes into contact with the sphere of international politics. Even I saw well how certain decisions are made in the United States and what determines them, although I never had the task of specifically studying this issue. You just can't help but understand some things if you work in an expert environment.

Moreover, these things should be visible to a professional intelligence officer. However, in Putin's system of thinking, neither individuals nor other peoples have subjectivity. He perceives them as objects in his geopolitical games. Accordingly, Putin is not able to understand the objective processes associated with the manifestation of the will of individuals or entire nations. Moreover, the Russian leadership not only does not see the consequences of its own actions, but also denies the very fact of these actions. However, it’s precisely these actions that cause incredible harm to the security of Russia itself.

Question: It turns out that without this understanding, any other intelligence information is useless?

Answer: You can say that. The ability to calculate the consequences of one's own actions is the main information that, more than any other, is important for Russia's security. By the way, you don’t even need to break the law to get it – it is obvious to any thinking person. However, for Putin, the picture of the world is static, he believes that “Russia will be destroyed, no matter what,” which absolutely does not reflect the real picture. Professionals working abroad cannot fail to see how far the Russian leadership is out of touch with realities. A person who retains at least some brain and conscience cannot work for such a system and come into conflict with reality every day. As a result, people either become agents of the other side, or, at best, simply leave intelligence.

Because of such negative selection, only the most unintelligent or unscrupulous people remain in the service, ready to carry out any order. It is possible that they are successful in individual operations such as stealing specific technologies, hacking attacks, targeted assassinations, obtaining information about new possible sanctions, and so on. However, against the background of the general catastrophic policy of the Russian state, this information is of very little value. It is incapable of turning the tide and repairing the damage that its own leadership is doing to Russia.

Question: It is interesting that in Russia this creates a whole cult of intelligence...

Answer: By the way, it is very revealing how one of the propagandists of this cult, a former spy, and now a regular on all Russian propaganda TV shows, Andrey Bezrukov, behaves. Recently, he has become, in fact, one of the apologists for modern Russian fascism. Even before the invasion of Ukraine, he lobbied for this war, advising "to reach the borders of Western Ukraine", and now he is engaged in the complete dehumanization of both Ukraine and the entire Western civilization, and puts forward some schizophrenic theories about Russia's historical mission to liberate the planet from the "Anglo-Saxon yoke". Infatuated with this Third Reich-style propaganda, he frequently contradicts his own statements.

It is unlikely that anyone else could discredit intelligence and everything connected with it so much, in fact, by merging it together with radical fascist propaganda. I'm afraid that after this, these concepts in Russia will be impossible to "wash" for decades. By the way, according to my information, former employees of the Russian special services also understand this, for the most part they disdain even to approach their former propagandist colleagues.

Question: Can we say that these processes of degradation affect Russian counterintelligence as well?

Answer: Of course. The same scheme of negative selection operates in it, when people without special intelligence, not weighed down by conscience and ready to fulfill any order are selected for work. The search for the truth does not interest these people in any way, since their task is not to investigate threats to the national security, but repression, which is carried out in two directions.

Regarding ordinary people, the repressions are based on distribution orders, when absolutely any dissident can fall under the reprisal. As for far as higher-ranking individuals, arrests on charges of treason are most often the result of squabbles between intelligence agencies or even between different divisions of the same special service. My sources in Moscow told me that this was the basis for the arrest of journalist Ivan Safronov and businessman Ilya Sachkov.

A Moscow expert, by the way, who today also became an active war propagandist, several years ago told me in plain text that there is no counterintelligence in Russia, but only politics. Simply put, the clans that lost in the wars of the “Kremlin towers,” or people associated with them, most often agents, become scapegoats in cases of high treason. At the same time, the Kremlin is well aware that for many years secret information from Russia has been flowing without problems to Western investigative centers. Nevertheless, all this is tacitly considered a normal form of political clashes.

Question: It turns out that the Kremlin is ready to turn a blind eye to betrayal?

Answer: If it does not concern the betrayal of Putin personally, yes. The reason for this, as in intelligence, is that no one is interested in the real truth. Moreover, we have already said that the main selection criterion for the Russian special services is meanness in everything that does not concern personal loyalty to Putin, that is, the readiness to carry out any, the most disgusting and inhuman order, without thinking about its consequences, and to promote any lie. It is quite logical that such people easily betray their associates. I myself have encountered similar cases in my practice.

In this case, betrayals, murders, failures, colossal corruption and other things are "forgivable shortcomings", a natural continuation of this main "dignity" – a comprehensive unscrupulousness. The Kremlin, in turn, forgives its minions for any stupidity in exchange for loyalty. The Russian authorities are no less condescending towards the crimes of their employees, since involvement in crimes creates the effect of mutual responsibility. So, according to the Kremlin, it ensures the loyalty of accomplices to the current regime. For example, people who participated in the massacre in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities are now vitally interested in maintaining the regime in order to avoid responsibility for their crimes.

Question: Isn't there a risk that operations as clumsy as, for example, falsification of evidence, will arouse distrust among the Russian population?

Answer: Alas, no, because the townsfolk today readily believe in any, even the most mediocre propaganda. At the moment, most Russians have a huge internal psychological need to find any, even the wildest, explanations that would allow them to maintain a sense of inner comfort and avoid the truth that is terrible for them. With such a great desire to believe in anything, the Russian authorities simply do not need to prepare a high-quality propaganda product. Even with such an abundance of propaganda as today, I sometimes get the feeling that the demand for it still exceeds the supply...