Churches, Smugglers and Even the Verkhovna Rada — Shelters for the Kremlin’s Agents

Churches, Smugglers and Even the Verkhovna Rada — Shelters for the Kremlin’s Agents

Recruited politicians, officials and networks of Russian agents: RUSI report on the Kremlin’s subversive activity in Ukraine

Networks of special agents and covert psychological operations, sabotage, intelligence and counterintelligence — all these components of the “non‑traditional military actions” employed by Russia against Ukraine were examined by analysts at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and presented in a report published on 29 March.

The report shows that Russia employed a wide variety of influence techniques long before the full‑scale invasion; notably, as Voice of America reports, it built an extensive network of special agents, recruiting Ukrainian officials among others.

The authors of the analytical report aimed to detail Russian methods to expose them, disrupt the perpetrators’ plans and prepare possible countermeasures. To prepare the report, numerous interviews were conducted before and during the war — within the intelligence community, among security specialists, government bodies and law enforcement. The report also relies on evidence obtained directly on the battlefield in Ukraine or “by other means from Russian intelligence services and organizations and the actors they interact with.” The set of facts covers actions by the Russian Federation between July 2021 and February 2023.

Although the authors acknowledge that the report does not contain exhaustive information on the methodology of Russian intelligence services’ work in Ukraine, they expressed hope that this work will be a useful resource for states, politicians and for strengthening society’s resilience against Russian methods and efforts aimed at destroying other countries.

“We hope that understanding Russia’s ‘non‑traditional’ operations will help explain some of the most specific aspects of Russian decision‑making and the use of its conventional military force during the full‑scale invasion of Ukraine,” say the authors Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danyliuk and Nick Reynolds.

Putin’s subordinates tend to be overly optimistic in reporting and understate risks to avoid criticism and punishment, RUSI report. Photo: Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP

“Spy meetings” at resorts in Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt following Soviet KGB instructions

According to the researchers, Russia’s FSB, which took an active role in planning and executing the invasion, received orders to prepare plans for the occupation of Ukraine in July 2021.

One of the main strategies was recruiting agents on the ground — the network had been built over decades. Moscow committed substantial resources to this.

The overall aim of the deployed agents, the report’s authors say, was to disable Ukraine’s state administration and military command, undermine public trust in state institutions, reduce national stability and minimize international partners’ assistance to Ukraine.

To receive instructions, agents met with Russian “handlers” in the autumn of 2021 during short vacations at resorts in Turkey, Cyprus and Egypt. During these “chance meetings” information was exchanged.

Moreover, Russian intelligence preferred — where possible — to minimize bringing in agents from Russia and instead recruit high‑ranking local agents in Ukraine who would later manage their own networks there.

This approach is recommended even in Soviet secret manuals and KGB instructions, RUSI’s report reminds readers.

Recruitment of nuclear energy workers

Ukraine’s nuclear energy infrastructure played one of the main roles in Russia’s invasion plan. To justify its aggression, the Kremlin publicly claimed that Ukraine “planned to create its own nuclear weapons,” and one of the tasks of the Russian “special operation” was the denuclearization of Ukraine. The intention was to capture all nuclear power plants and some nuclear research centers. To prepare these operations — the RUSI report shows — Russian intelligence recruited employees of nuclear facilities, including units responsible for physical protection.

Ukrainian intelligence and its foreign partners uncovered some of these agents, which allows analysis of the main tasks assigned to them by the Russian leadership and an understanding of their primary methods, the report’s authors say.

They recall the case of former pro‑Russian politician and member of parliament Andrii Derkach, who belonged to a GRU agent network in Russia exposed by the Security Service of Ukraine.

Derkach was a Russian agent included on the U.S. personal sanctions list described as “a Russian agent with more than a decade of service.” As Voice of America reported, Derkach was also accused of aiding Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election process.

Deterioration of Ukraine–U.S. relations — a constant priority of Russian intelligence services

In addition to Andrii Derkach, who according to the U.S. government was a Russian agent for more than 10 years, sanctions were also imposed on a number of other Ukrainian members of parliament, including Oleksandr Dubinskyi, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, as well as prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk, former deputy prosecutor general Andrii Telizhenko and three other Ukrainian citizens.

Aside from espionage in Ukraine, this group was suspected of attempting to influence the U.S. government, the report states. For this purpose they were involved in an anti‑corruption association in Ukraine that was purportedly meant to investigate corruption in the allocation of international aid to Ukraine.

“But instead their work was aimed at stopping or at least reducing international assistance to Ukraine,” the report asserts. “Given Ukraine’s critical dependence on military‑technical assistance from foreign partners, above all support from the United States, Russian special operations sought to worsen Ukraine’s relations with partners, especially the United States. This is a consistent priority of Russian intelligence services.”

However, not all Russian agents and their operations have been uncovered yet, the report’s authors warn. According to their information, a significant number of Russian agents in Ukraine and in other countries continue to operate actively.

Part of the report is also devoted to the treacherous activities in Ukraine of OPZZh leader Viktor Medvedchuk and deputies Viktor Chornyi and Illia Kiva, who earlier posed as a Russophobe and radical Ukrainian nationalist. As the report reminds, his tasks included radicalizing the sociopolitical situation in Ukraine, including by provoking opposition to pro‑Ukrainian organizations.

For this purpose, agents‑provocateurs were used at rallies and gatherings to try to provoke violent clashes with police and present them as an “attempted far‑right coup.”

Churches, smugglers, detective agencies — shelters for the Kremlin’s agents

To create safe havens for their agent network in Ukraine, the Russians recruited members of martial arts clubs, criminals (including drug dealers), former special forces personnel, security companies and detective agencies. In addition, according to the Border Guard Service, close ties were recorded between Russian officers and smuggling networks in Ukraine. Diplomatic mail from Russia‑friendly countries also facilitated the movement of cash.

According to the report, a consolidated group of ideologically loyal agents supporting the invasion were certain Orthodox churches. Their clergy were recruited and managed by Russian intelligence, and monasteries and churches were used as safe locations for equipment and personnel. “Using religion as a cover is a common technique of Russian intelligence services and a protection mechanism,” the report’s authors write.

They also cite research by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), which describes the activity of a priest ordained in Lviv who is now a spiritual mentor for young servicemen in Russia, Andrii Tkachov. Tkachov is also a popular TV host and blogger. “We wage war according to Christian principles,” he assures his listeners, “because we destroy transformers, not people who have immortal souls.”

Incidentally, Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko reacted this week to remarks by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that searches in the buildings of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) could have a “discriminatory character.” On his Facebook page Nikolenko wrote: “Ukraine is a democratic state that guarantees freedom of religion. At the same time, freedom is not identical to the right to engage in activities that undermine national security. We urge OHCHR to refrain from unbalanced political judgments and to base its reports on facts.”

Why the Kremlin’s agent network failed

Despite the scale of Russia’s efforts, only part of which is described in the report, the Kremlin failed to achieve the destabilization it had planned. The authors of the report formulated their conclusions and hypotheses about why spies and entire networks built over many years for internal destabilization of Ukraine and its rapid subsequent occupation proved unsuccessful for Moscow.

They explain why the years‑long subversive activity aimed at internal destabilization in Ukraine and rapid occupation ultimately failed for Moscow.

Russia failed to ignite an internal political crisis in Ukraine, failed to create the conditions for mass protests, and despite the pressure, President Zelensky did not leave his post or the country. Most Ukrainians do not accept Russia’s anti‑national demands and have actively resisted the aggressive invasion for over a year.

The authors believe two factors were fatal for Russia. First, Russian agents overestimated and exaggerated their influence on the Ukrainian state. Second, Russian intelligence received orders to support the occupation according to a “timeline” rather than an assessment of its viability. In other words, each subsequent stage of Russia’s plan began to be executed even if the previous phase had not succeeded.

This was enabled by an institutional culture of obeying orders that does not allow for “frank advice” from below.

“As we can see, until the last moment Russian agent networks prepared for internal destabilization based on conditions they created in Ukraine, the Russian military was practically unprepared and unsuited for a protracted military conflict,” the report states. “Moreover, Russian military aggression and crimes against the civilian population changed attitudes toward Russia not only among ordinary Ukrainians but also among members of pro‑Russian organizations. As in the case of the organization ‘Patriots for Life,’ some of whose members publicly condemned Russian aggression.”

Putin’s strategic mistake and the steps of the failed plan

The FSB’s plans, which focused on agents among Ukraine’s senior officials, failed. The Ukrainian state did not collapse from within as the Kremlin wanted, and many networks built over years were disrupted or had their key participants detained.

Furthermore, Russian plans were often undone by the absurdity of situations in which, for example, a policeman providing information to Russian forces for financial reward realized that tanks or bombs could be directed at the town where his own family lived. Thus many of the networks that Russia had relied on became unreliable in the first days of the invasion because Russian forces failed to secure their objectives and deliver promised benefits to Ukrainian collaborators in exchange for their risk, the report asserts.

All of Russia’s force employment logic was based on its hope for rapid success from the first days. Thus the report’s authors call the decision to invade a strategic error in judgment by Putin personally.

Most Russian planning focused on what to do after the invasion, in particular after Russia’s desired occupation of Kyiv within 72 hours.

The report gives some details of such plans. The first step would have been to use local agents to help seize executive and parliamentary power. Separately, Kadyrovtsy would have hunted Ukrainians whom Russia considered organizers of patriotic resistance and those associated with the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. It was expected that this would be a reprisal comparable to how the Russians treated Chechen insurgents after the fall of Grozny in 2000.

Voice of America wrote more about parallels between the realities of the war against Ichkeria in a piece covering an academic conference on historical memory.

A third line of effort was to pacify the population. This was to be achieved by isolating communities via natural obstacles and infrastructure. Organizers of local protests could be identified and later targeted by Kadyrovtsy.

The subsequent tasks of Russian military units — the report says — included seizing the National Bank of Ukraine, municipal infrastructure, and the like. Then Viktor Medvedchuk in the Ukrainian parliament was to create a peace movement, pass resolutions calling for capitulation to “save lives and save Ukraine.” In regions deemed problematic, plans called for causing power outages, disrupting utilities and extracting financial resources to further isolate them and ensure ongoing instability. The “main defenders of peace,” i.e., candidates for local government positions, were planned to be officials who were part of the agent network.

Strengths and weaknesses of Russian intelligence services

Information and cyberattacks were also used in the early days of the war to fragment resistance, mostly targeting communications systems. Microsoft recently said that upcoming cyberattacks from Russia will aim to weaken Western support for Ukraine — military aid and intelligence sharing.

Despite successes by Russian intelligence in, for example, recruiting agents, the report’s authors identify significant shortcomings: dishonest internal reporting, lack of independent assessment of plan viability, bias, and unrealistic expectations of their own success.

“There appears to be a systemic problem of overreporting successes and hiding weaknesses from leadership,” the authors of the analysis on Russian realities write. “This is evidenced by an overly optimistic assessment by the Russian agent network of the level of support Russia expected to receive in Ukraine in the context of a full‑scale invasion.”

Another major vulnerability of the Russian approach to “non‑traditional military actions,” the report says, is a “cookie‑cutter” approach and preference for tried‑and‑tested Soviet‑era methods instead of innovation.

In addition, the Russian system scales operations rather than treating each as an individual case.

However, the RUSI report notes dynamism and entrepreneurialism within Russian intelligence services, for example as demonstrated by the Wagner Group. Their willingness to take risks is also driven by internal competition and Putin’s tendency to reward or punish.

Although Russian services have most likely failed in Ukraine so far, countering them will remain no less important in the future, the report’s authors emphasize.

Earlier, RUSI also published a piece arguing that the Russian offensive against Ukraine was accompanied by a cascade of intelligence failures at all levels. “The irony of this, of course, is that the ruling group around Putin is numerically and functionally dominated by former intelligence officers,” the publication noted. A likely cause of such failure was named as the tendency of authoritarian regimes to invest heavily in secret information collection while paying insufficient attention to proper analysis.

Russia’s disinformation and spy war against democratic countries

Speaking of spy networks, the President of Ukraine emphasized on 29 March, during the Summit for Democracy, that it is not only Ukraine Russia has “long been at war with” through espionage and other forms of interference in foreign states’ affairs.

Zelensky said: “Russia has long been at war with all of you — with the world’s democracies. It wages war using disinformation, election interference, espionage, export of corruption, cybercrime, and tries to provoke an energy crisis that will hit your bills [...]”

As Voice of America reported, recently an individual was arrested in Poland on suspicion of spying for Russia. In Germany there were warnings in January of increased activity by Russian intelligence services.

“We all must beware of online disinformation,” General Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during budget hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives about social networks, propaganda and, in particular, bots from hostile states.

And the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, Ken McCallum, said last year that his country refused visas to more than 100 Russian diplomats on national security grounds during 2022.

According to him, this year 600 Russian officials were expelled from Europe, 400 of whom his agency identified as spies.

McCallum believes this mass expulsion of Russian spies from Europe after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine dealt “the most significant strategic blow” to Russian intelligence services in modern history.

Last week in the U.S., the Department of Justice charged 37‑year‑old Russian Sergey Cherkasov, who impersonated a Brazilian, with espionage and fraud.

Source: Voice of America