Russian Intelligence Services: News & Discussion

That would be good if it was true, but I think they are just idiots who like Apple products like that young British defence minister with his Apple product that interrupted a meeting in parliment when Siri asked for confirmation of what was being said.

I would think that alone would be enough to get that man fired, but no... spying is OK when the Americans do it because they are only looking for terrorists and Russian spies and drug dealers and child molester rings, and would never use such information that they find to bully or force their allies to do what they want them to do... NOT.

The sooner western computer hardware and software is banned in Russia and China and the rest of the world the better.

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

So now they don't want to escalate things... doesn't that make them chicken... by their own criteria?

Are they really THAT stupid in CIA nowadays?

Rhetorical questions are too ambiguous for these guys... but yes, they are that stupid... to claim they knew about it all the time and then to claim they had nothing to do with it.

Funny that Russia got wind of 11/9 and notified the US in advance... a warning the US ignored...

There were articles in western mainstream media orifices in April and May that Putin was weak and Prigozhin could launch a coup to take over
when the hyped Ukr counter-offensive achieved rapid advances putting the Russian army to flight. I am not making this crap up.
This evidence that the US (NATO) was involved in the Prigozhin affair. This is standard NATzO use of MSM.

The US can't be trusted in any way, you can bet they would have done all they could to create this situation and then claimed in public they had nothing to do with it... if you don't believe me then ask the NSII pipes they blew up and then claimed Russia did it and now they claim Kiev did it...

After their first million lies why would anyone believe anything they say...

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.

The article states the comments to the Russian official were to try to stop the situation escalating, so this was all about trying to prevent Russia from doing to them what they have been doing the last 200 odd years.

The only thing that is probably true is that they don't want escalation because I rather suspect the US is actually quite fragile and a kick in the right place might cause some real damage that the current administration is not really very well equipped to deal with.

The US has a government department called the CIA whose purpose is to do all sorts of illegal nasty shit around the world in a way that the US can deny involvement or prior knowledge and the CIA probably gets more funding than the entire Russian military.

On a related note I see the Taliban have managed in less than two years something the US couldn't manage in 20 years...

https://www.rt.com/news/579056-taliban-slashes-afghan-opium-output/

The most successful country in the war on drugs is Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban... but this is no surprise because the CIA has no interest in reducing its own income that it gets from the drug trade...

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

In other words Russian intel is right and our intel is wrong most of the time... except the actual problem is lack of actual intelligence in the US but that is another topic...

Hersh announced the risk of conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation due to American intelligence, 09.13.2023.

Hersh: problems in the US intelligence community could lead the country into conflict with Russia.

The administration of US President Joe Biden is ignoring individual intelligence reports that relate to Ukraine due to the unfavorable information they contain. American journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh reported this on September 13.

The journalist added that problems in intelligence work could lead to conflict with Russia.

“If left unchecked, [it] could lead a short-sighted White House into an extended war with Russia that no one wants,” Hersh wrote.

The journalist pointed out that "much of the CIA's ongoing reporting on Ukraine's failed offensive has been ignored by [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and other foreign policy officials in the Biden administration."

He called it a common reality that post-9/11 presidents have not hesitated to manipulate and lie about even the most competent intelligence reports if they don't fit into their political agenda. According to him, one of the senior intelligence officials told him that the reports of the Pentagon Intelligence Agency were ignored for the sake of political expediency 10 years ago, as they are now.

At the same time, Hersh notes that last week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that he was confident in the ultimate success of Ukraine’s counter-offensive. The journalist suggests that the reason for such a statement could be the “insanely optimistic” assessments of the Pentagon intelligence department.

Earlier, on May 17, Hersh already stated that Biden was receiving incomplete intelligence about the conflict in Ukraine . In particular, according to journalists, according to secret Pentagon documents leaked online, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, secretly from the White House, insisted on a missile strike on Russia.

At the same time, on August 17, a former State Department employee, retired US Marine Corps officer Matthew Ho said that American intelligence often provides erroneous intelligence that is easy to manipulate in accordance with the political agenda. At the same time, information in documents often differs.

The special operation to protect Donbass , the start of which was announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, continues. The decision to hold it was made against the backdrop of an aggravation of the situation in the region due to shelling by the Ukrainian military.

https://iz.ru/1573633/2023-09-13/khersh-zaiavil-o-riske-konflikta-ssha-c-rf-iz-za-amerikanskoi-razvedki