A surge in the activity of Russian intelligence personnel on United States soil has caused American spy agencies to rehire retired Russia specialists, according to Newsweek. Additionally, Russian defectors living in the US are reevaluating their personal safety in light of the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in England last month, said Newsweek’s intelligence correspondent Jeff Stein in an article published on Sunday.
Writing from Washington, Stein said that US counterintelligence agencies —notably the Federal Bureau of Investigation— are “on edge” over the attack on Skripal, which the British government said was carried out with a military-grade nerve agent on orders of the Kremlin.
Soviet spy agencies have a long history of assassinating defectors, called ‘wet operations’ in Russian spy parlance. But such activities were considerably scaled back after the 1970s. However, many claim that the rise of Vladimir Putin to power brought back these tactics, and that Moscow may now be investing more time and money in ‘wet operations’ training. Stein quoted one anonymous Russian defector living in the US as saying that it would be “easy [for Russian spy services] to find us if they are really determined”.
It usually takes an email, text or phone call to friends or relatives back in Russia for Moscow to start tracking the physical whereabouts of defectors. In other cases, family members of defectors may be followed by Russian intelligence personnel while visiting the US to reunite with relatives, said the US-based defector.
The same source told Stein that suspected Russian intelligence personnel had been spotted by US counterintelligence teams surveilling the neighborhoods where Russian defectors reside. To address what they see as an “uptick in Russian activity […] over the past two years”, the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency “have been bringing people out of retirement” with expertise on Russian intelligence operations, Stein reports.
The veteran intelligence correspondent also spoke to retired CIA officers, who did not rule out an attempt by Russian intelligence to carry out a ‘wet operation’ on American soil. Stein contacted the CIA and the FBI, asking them to respond to these concerns. He said the CIA declined to comment, while the FBI did not return his messages.
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