In 1985, a man carrying a Safeway bag waited on Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Prospekt. Another man soon passed, holding a Harrods carrier bag and eating a Mars bar. The two exchanged glances. Shortly afterwards, the former was bundled into the boot of a car by his British spy handlers and sped across the Finnish border as the KGB raced to locate him.
The valuable individual was Oleg Gordievsky — KGB colonel, former head of Russian intelligence in London and longtime double agent. Unlike the majority of agents, Gordievsky had always stressed that his duplicity stemmed from moral rather than financial motives, saying, “I want to work for the West out of ideological conviction, not for gain.”
Yesterday, nearly forty years after Gordievsky’s defection, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service Sir Richard Moore made an unprecedented intervention, openly calling for Russians “appalled” by Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine to become agents for UK intelligence. Once again, British spies are hoping to find sources motivated by ideological concerns, in this case those who are, in Moore’s words, “watching in horror as their soldiers ravage a kindred country”.
It is an auspicious moment for the spy boss to make such an appeal. The Russian military, political and business elites who possess information valuable to UK intelligence are likely still rattled by drone attacks on the capital, not to mention the 24th June uprising in which it seemed Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin would march on Moscow with a band of criminals and guns for hire.
Putin has consistently striven to protect the metropolitan elites from the consequences of his invasion. He built a bomb shelter in a luxury hospital to reassure them in the wake of the Moscow drone attacks, and has recruited disproportionately in poorer provincial areas to bolster the war effort.
However, there were signs emerging even before Prigozhin launched his armed assault that Russia’s elites were perturbed by Putin’s war. In April this year, a leaked telephone conversation revealed music producer Iosif Prigozhin and energy billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov criticising Putin and his associates, complaining that the government “stole the country’s future”.
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SubscribeIts now longer the Russians who are exporting a sick ideology to the rest of the World, the Globohomo regime needs to worry about defectors who want to undermine it, not for money, but because they understand its evil nature
What in the world are you talking about?
The US is the evil empire now, do what you can to resist and undermine it
The US is the evil empire now, do what you can to resist and undermine it
What in the world are you talking about?
Its now longer the Russians who are exporting a sick ideology to the rest of the World, the Globohomo regime needs to worry about defectors who want to undermine it, not for money, but because they understand its evil nature
Who advised Putin to blow up 60,000 tons of grain bound for Asia & Africa, further straining relationships with his only allies in those territories? With friends like that….
Who advised Putin to blow up 60,000 tons of grain bound for Asia & Africa, further straining relationships with his only allies in those territories? With friends like that….
BBc’s Hardtalk with Mikhail Zygar is very instructive on this subject and holds out a little hope for a post-Putin Russia ???
BBc’s Hardtalk with Mikhail Zygar is very instructive on this subject and holds out a little hope for a post-Putin Russia ???