Sean Wiswesser, a former CIA Chief of Station who spent decades working against Russian intelligence, says the image of the flawless Russian spy bears little resemblance to how the system actually works. The FSB, SVR and GRU are corrupt, often sloppy and still capable of penetrations, sabotage and assassinations abroad. “They remain formidable precisely because there’s no accountability,” he tells Kyiv Post special correspondent Jason Jay Smart.
Wiswesser traces that culture through the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the assassination of Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in Berlin and Vladimir Putin’s successful effort to bring convicted assassin Vadim Krasikov back to Russia. Krasikov’s return sent its own message through the services: kill for the state and Moscow will fight to bring you home. Officers do not have to display perfect tradecraft when the system rewards aggression and rarely punishes failure.
The criminal side of the FSB is even more direct. “They shake down the companies themselves! It’s very much like a mafia clan,” Wiswesser says of its Economic Security Service. He describes protection payments, cybercriminals working for Russian intelligence while continuing their own crimes, corruption inside intelligence training, and expendable recruits found through Telegram for arson and sabotage abroad. These are not invincible spies. They are dangerous because criminal methods and state power operate together. Wiswesser's bestselling book, Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War, is now available for purchase on Amazon:
Source: Kyiv Post
