Vladimir Putin’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has been activating “sleeper agents” who have lived ordinary lives in the UK for many years, even decades.
Not only are Russian agents living an operating in the UK but also in other Western countries which comes as Putin is operating in “riskier” methods in their trade craft.
The Russian despot is facing military setbacks in his so called “special military operation” which has led to Putin using old and fragile Soviet-era methods.
Following the expulsion of many Russian diplomats who inevitably also spy for Moscow have now been left with little choice but to also employ “illegals” in the West, such as the three Bulgarian’s who were arrested in Britain for allegedly spying for Moscow.
Read more on Russia-Ukraine war:
NATO country warns Europe should expect ‘further provocation’ in the face of ‘Russian and Belarus growing aggressiveness’
An intelligence official told the Guardian, “The time after the war, with all the expulsions, was a fateful time for the Russian intelligence system and they have tried to replace it with different things.”
Janez Stušek, who was the director of Slovenia’s main intelligence agency until June 2022, said, “I believe that the Chinese are mostly interested in economic issues, but for the Russians it’s also political, about the EU and NATO.”
The Guardian also reported that Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist with Bellingcat that Moscow has ramped up their spy games since the illegal invasion of Ukraine.
Grozev said, “They lost so much of the capacity they had with spies under diplomatic cover.”
“The short-term operatives they used from unit 29155 are also now considered to be burned,” he added.
Western intelligence officials believe that unit 29155 was a top-secret GRU task force involved in sabotage and assassinations across Europe, such as the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury.
Grozev said that Russia was then forced into using the illegals, adding, “They’ve had to activate their sleepers, and when you do that, you risk much more disclosure.”
The Guardian also reported that John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, said, “It’s almost impossible for counterintelligence services to uncover illegals, except some of these GRU illegals who seem to have had sequential passport numbers. It is almost always a human source.”
The Kremlin spy network are intensifying their “undercover work” with “secret informants” across the UK as Russian intelligence agencies are also stepping up the recruitment of “sophisticated networks.”
A Russian intelligence source has revealed that Putin has personally ordered his intelligence agencies to accelerate their recruitment of “kamikaze” spies in the UK who operate in “all walks of life.”
An intelligence source has warned that Russian spies who will report to case handlers funneling juice back to the Kremlin will comprise of moles who will come from every part of normal life.
The source added, “No one should think they are immune.
“I’m talking about students, trade unions, protest groups, teachers, Uber drivers as well as politicians, the civil service and the police,” the Mirror previously reported.
The Kremlin’s SVR network which is their version of the UK’s MI6 claims to already have hundreds of spies already operating in Britain who are already reporting information up the food chain.
