Spying A Russian Growth Industry
Spying A Russian Growth Industry
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SOMEWHERE in the depths of the Lubyanka building, the curator of the FSB museum must be rubbing his hands with glee.
Until the now infamous British "rock" was exposed this week, he had not had many new toys to add to the Russian security service's collection of mostly Cold War spy gadgetry. But if intelligence experts are right, he can expect many more trophies as Western spy agencies step up their operations in Russia to a level not seen since the Soviet collapse.
Western intelligence services said last year that Russia had aggressively escalated its spying on their patches since President Vladimir Putin - a former KGB spy - took power in 2000. It is now considered second only to China in its aggressive quest for Western technological, commercial and military secrets.
What is less widely publicised is that US and British intelligence agencies have also been actively recruiting Russian-speaking agents in tandem with Russia's growing economic and political clout, intelligence experts say.
"The Cold War has ended; now we have the hot peace," Oleg Nechiporenko, a prominent former KGB spy, said.
Advertisement: Once called "the best KGB agent in Latin America" by the CIA, he was thrown out of Mexico in 1971 for plotting to overthrow the government. He said he was not surprised by the Federal Security Service's (FSB) allegation on Monday that it had caught four British embassy employees spying, using an electronic device hidden in a fake rock.
"These days you see leaders hugging and smiling, but everyone still has their own geopolitical interests - that's where the special services come in."
FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev said that his agents caught 26 foreign intelligence officers and 67 of their agents last year, of whom 13 were expelled.
By comparison, the FSB apprehended 18 foreign spies in 2004, six of whom were caught red handed, and two of whom were expelled, he said. It caught 13 in 2003. Analysts said that Western intelligence agencies had channelled most of their resources into the Arab world since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US. They have also expanded co-operation with Russia.
In the past two years, however, the West has once again started to perceive Russia as a long-term threat as Mr Putin reasserts the Kremlin's authority at home and across the former Soviet Union.
Russia still has a vast nuclear arsenal and poorly guarded stockpiles of nuclear material. The Kremlin has close ties to governments deemed hostile to the West, particularly Iran, Syria and North Korea. And Russia has sold billions of dollars of weaponry to China over the past decade.
Perhaps most importantly, however, the West is becoming increasingly dependent on Russia as an energy source. One Moscow-based diplomat said of the Russian gas monopoly: "An informant within Gazprom would be priceless."
