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