Yesterday’s terrible terrorist attack at Domodedovo has had a variety of outcomes. Some heart-warming, not least the outpouring of official and public sympathy, from governments to the individual Muscovites who drove passengers to and from the airport to save them from opportunistic fares that some taxi drivers were demanding in the aftermath. Others knee-jerk, such as the new security measures which will ensure that for the immediate future Moscow’s airports will become bottlenecked nightmares, probably with no increase in security. And others predictable but no less depressing, such as the blame game between various security agencies.
All posts in category SVR
The Domodedovo blame game
Posted by Mark Galeotti on January 25, 2011
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/the-domodedovo-blame-game/
Wikileaks (1): the Spanish take on the Russian state and OC
Others (notably Sean Guillory) are doing a sterling job of generally covering the Russia-related cables being exposed through wikileaks, and to be honest I don’t have the time to write much this week, so I just want at present to confine myself to making a few comments on some of them relating to Russian organised crime.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on December 1, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/wikileaks-1-the-spanish-take-on-the-russian-state-and-oc/
KGB or Koschei: will the SVR be swallowed by the FSB?
RFE/RL’s Brian Whitmore’s latest Power Vertical blog post rounds up the latest chatter, that news that the brace of Russian deep-cover spies in the USA were blown by Colonel Shcherbakov, the man running such operations in North America for the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) may be used by the Federal Security Service (FSB) as a pretext to swallow up its smaller rival.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on November 12, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/kgb-or-koschei-will-the-svr-be-swallowed-by-the-fsb/
Viktor Bout: GRU, not KGB?
Just a quick little thought. As it becomes increasingly possible that international arms-mover, hot-landing-supremo and man of mystery Viktor Bout will be extradited to the US, there is a fair amount of excited coverage about what secrets he could tell, if he were minded to do so. A common assumption is that he was a KGB officer and is thus now on at least nodding terms with its foreign intelligence successor, the SVR. I’m not convinced. If he has a secret service connection — and my wholly instinctive assumption is that he does — I would suggest that it is with the GRU, military intelligence, the Main Military Directorate of the General Staff. This is just a personal hunch, but is based on his trajectory, contacts, business and field of operation.
Posted by Mark Galeotti on August 31, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/08/31/viktor-bout-gru-not-kgb/
The spy swap: a good deal for Moscow?
Yesterday’s fascinating and faintly-bizarre spy swap on the runway at Vienna saw the Russians swap two real spies, one possible ex-spy and a slightly naive academic who fell foul of institutional paranoia for ten professional (if not especially effective*) deep-cover intelligence operatives. Furthermore, the quick exchange saves face for Russia, forestalling what otherwise would be a long and lurid trial, drip-feeding the public with lurid and sometimes surreal tales of dead-letter drops, buried money, subsidised housing and exasperated communications from Moscow Centre about their lack of productivity.
So it looks as if in return for getting caught in an aggressive long-term, deep-penetration espionage operation against the USA, Russia is getting off very lightly. It even gets to fulminate about US plots and provocations and — as one news report already has — vaunt a “10-4 win.”
Posted by Mark Galeotti on July 9, 2010
https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/the-spy-swap-a-good-deal-for-moscow/
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