Edward Lucas - Deception

That would be an unusual offer for anyone wanting to quash suspicion of involvement in espionage. It is possible that someone at AIA was hoping to act as a private intelligence broker. I have discussed the issue with people who think it likely that the outfit was operating on behalf of a government, wanting to flush out either sources of information, or demand for it. The ‘freelance news agency’ willing to pay generously for research material commissioned by anonymous clients was a staple of Cold War espionage: readers may recall George Smiley using it. The sort of people who read the published material on AIA’s website would have included those with an appetite – and a budget – for more sensitive information along similar lines. One explanation is that its website was designed, not necessarily with Mr Falkov’s consent or knowledge, to note the people visiting it, and perhaps to log details of their computers or even to plant viruses on them. Another is that its backers were interested to see what kind of orders came in: that could cast an interesting light on the behaviour and needs of government agencies. I do not find this completely convincing: no serious intelligence service would go shopping like this without thorough scrutiny of AIA, which would reveal its suspiciously flimsy structure. Another option is that it was an attempt by a government agency to spot potential sources of information. Any new contributors making themselves known to AIA would represent an interesting pool of potential sources. Those with access to real secrets could then be put on first consulting contracts and then developed, either directly or indirectly, as real agents if they proved useful. But the danger of a trap – a ‘dangle’ in espionage parlance – would be great.

More likely in my view is that AIA was (not necessarily with Mr Falkov’s consent or knowledge) a counter-intelligence operation. Defence, security and intelligence officials in the ex-Soviet region are often demoralised, disgruntled and outright discontented by the corruption and futility of their jobs. It would be most interesting for the FSB, say, to know which of them would be willing to nibble at the carrot of discreet extra income from a foreign information agency. People vulnerable to a phoney temptation could also be open to an approach by a real espionage service. Such potential weakness is best known about in advance. Widely read by just the right people, Axisglobe’s site would have been a neat way of flushing out such potential sources. But its putative role as part of an active intelligence operation was probably quite brief. It established its credibility, reaped its harvest, and then drifted into decay. Its significance may have been chiefly the way that it combined, certainly not for the last time, the anonymity of the internet with the human resources that the Russian diaspora represents for the intelligence and security services in Moscow. On 7June 2011 the site was bought by a Japanese blogger for $940. That at least was a commercial transaction.

So far I have outlined much of the profile of Russian espionage: in cahoots with gangsters at one moment, bullying émigrés to cooperate at another, stealing industrial secrets the next, and turning to lobbyists and lawyers when that becomes necessary. This is bad enough for countries inside the EU and NATO. It is far worse for those on its fringes. I conclude this section with a detailed look at the frontline of Russia’s military-intelligence effort – the subversion, special operations and dirty tricks being practised in Georgia, a country that has challenged Russia’s claim to a droit de regard in the former Soviet Union. This idea is a central part of Russia’s foreign-policy thinking about its neighbours; nothing should happen that Russia does not know about, and nothing should happen that Russia does not consent to.

Under the Tsarist empire from 1813 to 1917, briefly independent until 1921 and then part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991, Georgia has a special place in the hearts and minds of Russian officials. They see it rather as Americans do Florida, a prized spot for recreation and the source of countless sentimental holiday memories. It is also a bastion of Russian influence on the Black Sea, and a bulwark against historic rivals for influence in the region such as Iran and Turkey. The idea that Georgia – an Orthodox Christian country – might want to head westwards, joining the European Union and even NATO, strikes most such Russians as preposterous effrontery, even if it is exactly what the overwhelming majority of Georgians want. Russia kept a military presence in Georgia, against the will of the republic’s authorities, until 2006, occasionally displaying military muscle in a show of force. But the real threat was not the demoralised and largely barracks-bound regular soldiers.

So far I have mainly dealt with the direct heirs to the KGB, the FSB domestic security agency and the SVR foreign-intelligence service. But in Georgia’s case, another organisation is at work: the GRU military-intelligence service. [23] w Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye (Main Intelligence Directorate). Georgian officials term it the ‘most aggressive and destructive’ of Russia’s three spy services. With around 12,000 employees,7 the GRU has maintained unbroken institutional continuity since Leon Trotsky created it in 1918 (and it draws on a long tradition of Russian military espionage going back to Peter the Great). Even in Soviet times, the GRU’s motivation was more patriotism than communist ideology. Its officers tend to come from the provinces rather than Russia’s metropolises, from humbler backgrounds than the elite spies of the SVR, and nowadays from more honest ones than the cronies and thugs of the FSB. Partly as a result, the GRU tends to stay clear of the dodgy money-laundering schemes and commercial shenanigans beloved of its sister agencies: it will take part when operationally necessary, but not out of simple greed. It is hard, for example, to imagine a GRU officer being involved in the swindles that led to the death of Sergei Magnitsky. The agency is also less subject to political interference than the SVR: it is directly responsible only to the defence ministry, which shields it somewhat from the feuds and machinations at the top of Russian officialdom. But its senior officers and people close to it run into trouble if they stray into national politics. 8

The GRU’s chief mission is to collect military information affecting Russian national security, especially plans, hardware and personnel moves. Those who watch it sometimes feel the agency is stuck in something of a time warp, with targets and tasking almost unchanged since Soviet times. GRU officers seem to assume that foreign countries have secret plans to attack Russia that must be uncovered. If they cannot be found, then the search must be intensified. GRU doctrine and methods have in the past been different too. It tends to go for the ‘quick hit’: overcoming a source’s reluctance, squeezing out his secrets and then dumping him, shutting him up with money, threats or worse. GRU officers are trained in the use of force and are quite capable of using it. In this sense, the GRU is quite different from counterpart organisations such as America’s Defense Intelligence Agency (part of the Pentagon) or Britain’s Defence Intelligence (which works out of the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall). These are chiefly focused on analysing information; when their staff members venture into the field, it is mainly as embassy-based attachés.

The GRU’s officers do work as military attachés too. But its role is much wider. Until the military reforms of 2009 it used to have responsibility for most of Russia’s elite Spetsnaz special forces – the equivalent of Britain’s SAS and SBS, or America’s Delta Force. It continues to have a special-operations capability. A small cadre of illegals are posted abroad, mainly to act as saboteurs in time of war. The agency also runs an extensive military counter-intelligence effort inside Russia; it is responsible for satellite reconnaissance (a comparable function to America’s National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency) and also for military electronic information collection, such as snooping on NATO communications. The GRU’s officers are trained at the ‘Aquarium’ spy school and headquarters building in Moscow. In a sign of the agency’s prestige, in November 2006 Mr Putin formally opened the agency’s glitzy new building, on Narodnogo Opolchenia (People’s Militia Street) in the heart of Moscow. A sycophantic news report 9showed the indoor swimming pool (for training frogmen) a firing range, special windows incorporating anti-bugging technology and a hi-tech situation room.