Fluent Essays

In no less than two paragraphs (5-7 sentences EACH) please discuss the events, political figures, and federal agencies that catalyzed the decline of the relationship between Russia and the United States after the Cold War. Please utilize information from at least two of the readings provided, and use in-text citations to cite your sources (a full bibliography is not required). Russia  This article is more than 4 months old Russia expels 10 US diplomats as part of retaliation for sanctions This article is more than 4 months old · Moscow will also restrict activities of US NGOs · Freeze on non-US staff potentially crippling for diplomatic effort The US embassy with its national flag, seen behind a monument to the Workers of 1905 Revolution in Moscow, Russia. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Andrew Roth  in Moscow Fri 16 Apr 2021 16.11 EDT · · · Russia has delivered a sharp response to the Biden administration’s sanctions, blacklisting senior officials and targeting the US diplomatic mission, including the US ambassador, with potentially paralysing restrictions. In a tit-for-tat response to  US sanctions for elections interference and the recent SolarWinds hack , Moscow said on Friday that it would expel 10 US diplomats from the country. Biden hits Russia with new sanctions in response to election meddling Read more The Russian foreign ministry also barred entry to eight current and former US officials, including the US attorney general, the heads of the NSA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the domestic policy council director, Susan Rice. The former national security adviser John Bolton and former CIA director James Woolsey were also barred from Russia. And in a dramatic move, Moscow also recommended that the US recall its ambassador, John Sullivan. Russia recalled its own ambassador to Washington last month after  Joe Biden agreed with a journalist when asked if he considered Vladimir Putin “a killer” . Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that Putin “has endorsed these measures in response to the absolutely hostile and unprovoked actions that Washington has announced with regard to Russia, our citizens, individuals and legal entities and with regard to our financial system”. The sanctions row is the worst since the 2018 Salisbury poisonings, when Washington expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Seattle consulate following the use of a novichok nerve agent in the UK by men believed to be Russian military intelligence agents. Russia responded by expelling 60 US diplomats and closing the US consulate in St Petersburg. Russian  diplomats have lashed out at the UK  for joining the US in condemning Russia’s international cyber-espionage efforts, although no sanctions measures were announced against the UK (Russia has extended a flight ban ostensibly due to the UK coronavirus strain). Moscow will also expel five Polish diplomats in a retaliatory move. Anger has been growing in the United States over alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 and 2020 US elections and Russian intelligence agencies’ cyber-espionage campaign, culminating in the SolarWinds supply chain hack that has compromised nine US federal agencies and more than 16,000 computers, according to the US government. The sanctions also appear to be making up for lost time, as the Trump administration was seen as failing to confront the Kremlin for its aggressive moves. In the new sanctions, the White House signalled it could target Russia’s economy by enforcing a ban on buying newly issued rouble bonds, a move that could drive down demand for Russia’s sovereign debt if it is extended to secondary markets. Russia cannot similarly threaten the US economy, so compensated by targeting what it has called US influence operations in the country, saying it plans to ban NGOs and funds run by the US state department and other government organisations. The foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, noted that Russia had, for now, refrained from taking ‘painful measures’ against US business interests in the country. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/AFP/Getty Images “We’ll restrict or stop activities in our territory of US foundations, US non-governmental organizations, which, in reality, are directly interfering, without hiding it, in our domestic political life,” Lavrov said. Lavrov also said that Russia “has the ability to take painful measures in relation to US business. We’ll save them for future use, too.” And in a potentially crippling move for the US diplomatic mission, Russia said it would bar the embassy and consulates from hiring Russian and third-country workers, exacerbating a personnel shortage that has already slowed US visa processing and other consular services in Russia down to a crawl. Russia in 2017 cut the US diplomatic head count by 755 people, a handicap that has continued to hamper the US diplomatic mission. Late last year, the US said it would close its consulate in Vladivostok and suspend work at its Yekaterinburg consulate due to ongoing labour shortages. Lavrov on Friday said that Moscow was considering cutting US diplomatic staff to 300, saying that Russia had the same number in the United States. Both sides have nonetheless said they would still seek to hold  a summit proposed by Biden during a phone call with Putin  earlier this week. There is “a lot of talk about Joe Biden’s proposal to organise a bilateral summit”, Lavrov said. “As we have already noted, we received it positively and are now examining various aspects of this initiative.” … we have a small favour to ask. Tens of millions have placed their trust in the Guardian’s high-impact journalism since we started publishing 200 years ago, turning to us in moments of crisis, uncertainty, solidarity and hope. More than 1.5 million readers, from 180 countries, have recently taken the step to support us financially – keeping us open to all, and fiercely independent. With no shareholders or billionaire owner, we can set our own agenda and provide trustworthy journalism that’s free from commercial and political influence, offering a counterweight to the spread of misinformation. When it’s never mattered more, we can investigate and challenge without fear or favour. Unlike many others, Guardian journalism is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe in information equality. Greater numbers of people can keep track of global events, understand their impact on people and communities, and become inspired to take meaningful action. We aim to offer readers a comprehensive, international perspective on critical events shaping our world – from the Black Lives Matter movement, to the new American administration, Brexit, and the world's slow emergence from a global pandemic. We are committed to upholding our reputation for urgent, powerful reporting on the climate emergency, and made the decision to reject advertising from fossil fuel companies, divest from the oil and gas industries, and set a course to achieve net zero emissions by 2030. If there were ever a time to join us, it is now. Every contribution, however big or small, powers our journalism and sustains our future. Support the Guardian from as little as $1 – it only takes a minute. Thank you. Top of Form Bottom of Form REPORT How the U.S.-Russia Relationship Got So Bad And why its problems will outlast both presidents. By  Amy Mackinnon , a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. Error! Filename not specified. U.S. President Joe Biden (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet during the U.S.-Russia summit at Villa La Grange in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16. PETER KLAUNZER/POOL/KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES JUNE 18, 2021, 2:31 PM In 2014, when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula, the first major land grab in Europe since World War II, it pushed relations between Moscow and the United States to their lowest ebb since the Cold War. Somehow, with every passing year, further ruptures—including election interference, cyberattacks, and the U.S. withdrawal from a Cold War-era nuclear arms treaty—have caused the relationship to nose-dive further. Wednesday’s summit in Geneva, Switzerland, between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin was seen as an important effort to place some guardrails on the relationship to prevent the world from seeing what rock bottom would look like. But beyond a joint statement agreeing nuclear armageddon is in neither country’s interest, little substance emerged from the summit. Now, both countries will try to lay the groundwork for future arms control talks, with a glimmer of hope for further talks on other contentious issues like cyberattacks and prisoner exchanges. But realizing a breakthrough in relations is unlikely, the Biden administration has made stability and predictability the watchwords in its dealings with Moscow. Even that may prove a stretch in dealing with Putin, whose signature move is unpredictability.  “Now we’re in a situation where Joe Biden … has got to clean up this huge mess, which has been building not just for the past four years but the past 30 years,” said James Schumaker, a retired foreign service officer who served as U.S. consul general in Vladivostok, Russia. Much of the Western discourse about Russia zeroes in on the proclivities of Putin, who has sat at the helm of the country for 21 years, and recent amendments to the constitution give him the option of remaining in power until 2036. The increasingly disruptive foreign policy Russia has pursued, especially after Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 after a four-year hiatus, bears all the hallmarks of the former KGB officer: a reliance on aggressive intelligence operations, disinformation, and little green men.  “Russia’s foreign policy is Putin’s foreign policy; there is only one national security decision-maker who has the privilege to define Russia’s national interests,” said Vladimir Frolov, a former diplomat who served at Russia’s embassy in Washington. “It has been heavily leveraged toward personal idiosyncrasies over the last 20 years of one man’s rule,” he said. But U.S. problems with Russia are about more than just Putin. A one-time superpower, Russia has spent the last three decades trying to restore the power and prestige many felt were lost when the Soviet Union collapsed.  “We need to take Russia seriously as a power, and that many of our interests that have been a conflict reflect enduring disagreements, and these disagreements will not end if Vladimir Putin ever exits the stage,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military with the CNA, a think tank based in Arlington, Virginia. The original sin in the relationship, as far as Moscow is concerned, is the expansion of NATO to include former members of the Warsaw Pact as well as Ukraine and Georgia’s ambitions to join the alliance. This would have caused tensions with the West regardless of who was in power in Russia.  What to Expect From the Biden-Putin Summit in Geneva The two leaders have much to discuss. Just don’t hold your breath for a breakthrough. EXPLAINER  |  AMY MACKINNON “The desire to have the West recognize that the post-Soviet space is a Russian sphere of influence, I think any Russian leader would probably have agreed with that,” said Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies at Georgetown University. “What you see in Putin is a restoration of a much more traditional Russian approach toward the United States.” But it wasn’t always like this. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his U.S. counterpart, Bill Clinton, forged a close relationship, with each seeing the other as key to advancing their interests. Yeltsin was dependent on the United States’ backing to fend off political challenges at home. Clinton, eager to open up Russia’s economy to Western investment and to prevent stray Soviet nuclear weapons from ending up in the wrong hands, ignored electoral irregularities and rampant corruption, which would later pave the way for Putin’s rise.  But as early as 1992, the contour of the Gordian knot that would come to plague U.S.-Russia relations was already apparent. In a dark speech to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Russia’s youthful reformist foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, warned the country would defend its interests in its former republics “using all available means” and accused NATO of meddling in Russia’s backyard. The return to Cold War saber-rattling stunned diplomats; former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger would later say it gave him heart palpitations. Kozyrev quickly returned to the stage to underscore that the speech had been a hoax, an effort at shock diplomacy to warn Western leaders of what a Russian foreign minister would sound like if nationalist forces took hold in Moscow. Kozyrev’s wake-up call was a prophecy eventually fulfilled by Putin after he became president in 2000. But it didn’t start out that way. Initially, Putin strove to find common cause with then-U.S. President George W. Bush in the early days of the war on terror as he waged his own brutal war against extremists in the restive North Caucasus. Russia shared intelligence to support U.S. operations in the early days of the U.S. War in Afghanistan and did not object to the establishment of a U.S. air base in Kyrgyzstan, which Moscow considered to be within its sphere of influence. “Putin really thought that now there’s really a moment when we can be allies and work together,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Moscow Center.  It was to be short lived, however, as a variety of factors converged in the early 2000s to considerably darken Putin’s view of the West and stoke feelings of paranoia, starting with the George W. Bush administration’s decision to withdraw from the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 2002.  “That was a knife in the back for Putin, when he felt that all this fundamental basis of relations started to fall apart,” said Stanovaya. The matter is still raw: It was the first thing Putin raised during his press conference in Geneva on Wednesday in response to a question about his own unpredictable style of foreign policy.  Next came the so-called “color revolutions” in Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine a year later. Both were peaceful mass uprisings in response to rigged elections, but Putin thought he saw a Western hand at work. It instilled a lasting paranoia about popular protests and the West’s ability to tilt countries Moscow felt should be in its camp closer to the West. Putin’s fears of regime change were only compounded by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, which he opposed. “I think that did color his view of American power and what it could accomplish,” said Timothy Frye, professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University.  Putin’s growing unease with what he saw as the United States’ dominant—and malignant—role was crystalized in a bellicose speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, where he excoriated U.S. foreign policy and warned that “almost uncontained hyper use of force—military force—in international relations” would plunge the world into an “abyss of permanent conflicts.” Just over a year later, Russia went to war with neighboring Georgia as it tried to reestablish control over the breakaway region of South Ossetia, further souring ties with Europe and the United States. Russia has poured money and troops into Georgia’s two breakaway regions, giving them de facto control over a quarter of the country’s territory and crippling Tbilisi’s NATO ambitions. Even during Putin’s time as prime minister, those same fault lines continued to increase tension with the West. The United States and NATO, over furious Russian objections, intervened in Libya in 2011 and ultimately toppled Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi—another frightening portent, in Putin’s eyes, of Western proclivity for violent regime change. Putin is  reported  to have obsessively watched the gruesome video of Qaddafi’s murder. Those fears were hardly assuaged when he returned to the presidency in 2012 amid mass street protests in Moscow against election rigging. Putin accused then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for fomenting the unrest and would exact his revenge on her presidential campaign years later.  Despite the Obama administration’s early efforts to pursue a reset with Russia during the interregnum presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s foreign policy took an aggressive and more confrontational turn when Putin returned to the Kremlin. In early 2014, Putin saw the specter of further Western encroachment in Russia’s near-abroad as Ukrainians toppled their Moscow-friendly government in favor of closer ties with Europe. Expanding on the playbook established in Georgia years earlier, Russia backed separatists in eastern Ukraine with its own military might and annexed the Crimean peninsula, sparking an avalanche of U.S. and European Union sanctions that further poisoned relations and hammered the Russian economy. Then, Putin intervened in the Syrian civil war to prop up embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, preventing a replay of what he felt was Libya’s disastrous endgame. Next came Russia’s attempts to sway the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which led to further U.S. sanctions and an increasingly antagonistic relationship with most of Washington, if not with former U.S. President Donald Trump. One of the enduring ironies of the Trump years is that for all of Trump’s puzzling affinities for his Russian counterpart, his administration toed a tough line on Moscow and levied further rounds of sanctions and diplomatic expulsions over Russia’s nefarious activity. Moscow’s meddling also hardened U.S. political and public opinion toward Russia, particularly among Democrats.  With that backdrop, few believe Wednesday’s summit can do anything more than make modest improvements to Washington’s fraught relationship with Moscow. “Under the current regime, and I won’t personalize and just say it’s just Putin, … it’s hard to see any significant improvement,” said Stent, who was among a group of experts who met with Biden ahead of the summit.  Some have  accused  the Biden administration of naiveté in its apparent hopes of patching up relations with Russia just enough to focus on what it sees as the principle strategic threat in China. But whether measured in nuclear weapons, conventional arms, or a capacity for cyber mayhem, there is little evidence Russia’s clout on the world stage is waning, Kofman said. “The establishment has, to some extent, been telling itself the fairytale that Russia is on its way out as a power,” he said. “That’s simply an intellectual alibi in order to focus on China.” Amy Mackinnon is a national security and intelligence reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter:  @ak_mack Russian intelligence is at (political) war • Dr Mark Galeotti • 12 May 2017 It is inevitable and understandable that we rely on mirror-imaging when looking at Russia’s security and intelligence services. The problem is that – however much there may appear to be meaningful comparisons on paper – in terms of their missions, interactions and mindsets, they are on a wartime footing. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is broadly comparable to agencies such as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, and France’s DGSE. Its Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is a military foreign intelligence service, again like so many NATO counterparts. The Federal Security Service (FSB) is a domestic security and counter-intelligence agency – while it is rather more carnivorous than the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Germany’s BfV or Italy’s AISI, at a pinch one might think the analogy holds. President Vladimir Putin – a former officer of the Soviet Union’s KGB and then director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) – regards the security service personnel as among his closest allies and most useful instruments. Here, he is seated between Director of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service Mikhail Fradkov (left) and Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov (right), celebrating the Day of Security Service staff in Moscow, 19 December 2015. © REUTERS But, if anything, a much better way of thinking of these agencies is to compare them to the British Special Operations Executive or US Office of Strategic Service of the Second World War. For they are engaged in far more than just collecting information to inform policy, and with a bias towards aggressive risk-taking that is actively encouraged by the Kremlin. The Russian intelligence system Russia’s security and intelligence services operate in a rather different political context that the West’s, and this gives them a radically different character. President Vladimir Putin – a former officer of the Soviet Union’s KGB and then director of the FSB – clearly regards the so- called Chekists (after the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ first political police) as among his closest allies and most useful instruments. In 2015, on the Day of Security Service Personnel, he called them “strong and courageous people, true professionals who are reliably protecting Russia's sovereignty and national integrity and the lives of our citizens.” As a result, they are at once coddled, competitive and corrupt. They are coddled in that throughout the Putin years they have seen their budgets and powers steadily increase. Furthermore, their very status within the political process has increased. Since around 2014, if not before, the indications are that ambassadors and indeed the foreign minister have much less authority to block operations (or even be informed of them in advance) than before. This comes at a price, though. Their perks are contingent on their ultimate master and patron, Putin, regarding them as being useful. The GRU, for example, spent years in disfavour because of their perceived failings during the 2008 Georgian War. The agencies have overlapping responsibilities (even the FSB is increasingly involved in foreign operations) and compete fiercely and ruthlessly to outshine the others. This is a carnivorous, cannibalistic system – as the former electronic intelligence service FAPSI discovered when it was devoured, largely by the GRU and FSB. As a result, they rarely cooperate well but, on the other hand, will take chances and demonstrate aggression and imagination. They also, as will be discussed below, compete to tell the Kremlin what it wants to hear, which is perhaps the most dangerous outcome of all. At the same time, the relative impunity of the security services, as well as their broad powers, has contributed to an endemic problem of corruption. This even extends to operational affairs, from skimming funds intended for Donbass warlords to using eavesdropping capacities to help a ‘friendly’ company win a contract. Ready for war… Whatever individual officers may feel, on an institutional level, the intelligence services share Putin’s belief that Russia faces a genuine threat from the West. This is existential not so much in geographic terms (even though some hardliners share Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev’s view that the United States “would much rather that Russia did not exist at all – as a country”) but politically and culturally. The Russian intelligence services share Putin’s belief that Russia faces a genuine threat from the West. Evidence notwithstanding, the hand of the CIA is seen in risings against pro-Russian authoritarians, such as Ukraine’s 2013-14 ‘Maidan protests’. © REUTERS Evidence notwithstanding, the hand of the CIA is seen in risings against pro-Russian authoritarians, such as Ukraine’s 2013-14 ‘Maidan protests’. Adverse judgements in international tribunals are regarded as rigged. The clear hunger within a portion of the Russian population for genuine democracy and rule of law are considered proof of a ‘soft power’ attempt to destabilise the existing regime; one former Russian security officer characterised it to me as “regime change by stealth.” In this context, the security services regard themselves as already at war, and operate accordingly. Three basic premises apply. The first is that any reverses for the West are to Russia’s implicit advantage. The second is that their role is concrete: they do not just gather information, they advocate policies and carry out active measures routinely. Finally, they seem to believe it is better to seize an opportunity than avoid a mistake. Western, peacetime agencies are rightly risk averse, well aware of the potential dangers, political or otherwise, in badly judged actions. Their Russian counterparts are far more adventurous; it is more dangerous for an officer’s career to be regarded as unwilling to take a chance than to trigger international opprobrium. Put together, these help explain the unprecedentedly high tempo and visibility of Russian active measures. Within their self-declared sphere of influence (the former Soviet states, with the exception of the Baltics), they are especially aggressive, whether staging terrorist attacks in Ukraine or actively interfering with the political process in Moldova. Even in the West, they are becoming increasingly visible. In the past year, for example, they have interfered with the US presidential elections, barraged Europe with divisive disinformation, and by all accounts staged an abortive coup in Montenegro. …but political war If Russia’s intelligence services consider themselves to be at war, what does ‘war’ mean in this context? Although there is the need to be ready for unforeseen dangers and changing intents, there is no real evidence that Putin has territorial ambitions beyond those nations he has already identified as within Russia’s sphere of influence. Essentially, this means the countries of the former Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic States. Rather, he regards NATO and the West as threats in three ways. First, they are obstructing Moscow’s efforts to ignore or undermine the sovereignty of states within that sphere of influence. Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus are the particular bones of contention at present. Second, in their commitment to democracy, transparency and the rule of law, they represent a normative challenge to the Russian model. Finally, they are, he believes, seeking to subvert his regime’s authority within Russia itself. Russia’s security and intelligence services are engaged in far more than just collecting information to inform policy, and with a bias towards aggressive risk-taking that is actively encouraged by the Kremlin. His aim is thus to deter the West, or at least to divide, distract and dismay it to the point that it is unable or unwilling to get in his way. This is the primary goal of the active measures conducted against NATO states by the Russian intelligence agencies. This is often characterised as hybrid war, but it is crucial to appreciate that there are two parallel approaches within Russian strategic thought. There is the military model, often mischaracterised as the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ after the present Chief of the General Staff, who wrote an article in the niche military publication Voenno-promyshlenny kurer in early 2013 that outlined current Russian thinking. (However, it is not a doctrine but an observation about the changing nature of war, and it predates Gerasimov.) This model sees the use of non-kinetic means as a crucial way to prepare the battlefield before the deployment of troops, as in Crimea and the Donbass. But within Russia’s national security establishment there is also a belief that the same non- kinetic instruments – subversion, corruption, disinformation, misdirection – can accomplish the desired results without the need for any shots being fired. This ‘political war’ model is currently in favour because it reflects the degree to which NATO and the West are stronger by every objective index, yet as a constellation of democracies vulnerable to the kind of measures a ruthless authoritarianism is able to employ. Russia’s intelligence services are the front-line soldiers in Moscow’s non-kinetic political war on the West. As such, no wonder Putin continues to hold them in such regard. Yet for all that, they may also prove to be his Achilles heel. Their aggressive interference in the West has not gone unnoticed and has generated a political backlash in Europe and North America. But in many ways they pose a more serious risk in Moscow. The competitiveness that he has fostered, combined with the way he himself is clearly increasingly unreceptive to having his ideas and prejudices questioned, now also means that they vie to tell him what he wants to hear. As a result, Putin has already made serious and costly mistakes, such as his intervention into the Donbass, which he was assured would lead to a quick capitulation by Kiev. The scope for further, even more serious errors are very real. Intelligence agencies ought to be able and willing to speak their ‘best truth’ to power; when that is no longer the case, then policy-making risks becoming erratic and we are all in trouble. What is published in NATO Review does not constitute the official position or policy of NATO or member governments. NATO Review seeks to inform and promote debate on security issues. The views expressed by authors are their own. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Mark Galeotti is a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, coordinator of its Centre for European Security, and author of the recent report ‘Hybrid War or Gibridnaya Voina: getting Russia’s non-linear military challenge right’ (Mayak, 2016). Russian intelligence operations: where to draw the line? #CriticalThinking Peace, Security & Defence 23 Apr 2021 Jamie Shea Senior Fellow for Peace, Security and Defence and former Deputy Assistant Secretary General for emerging security challenges at NATO share this insightShare on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedIn Over the past few weeks Russia has been top of the news every day due to the build-up of Russian military forces along the border with Ukraine, and in Crimea and the Black Sea. The West has been waiting anxiously to see if Putin is seeking only to intimidate Ukraine or is about to seize another chunk of its territory. As Russia has deployed around 120,000 troops and heavy equipment, vehicles and modern fighter aircraft facing Ukraine, this is undoubtedly the largest military crisis that Europe has witnessed since Moscow annexed Crimea in March 2014. At the same time, and at the other end of the crisis spectrum, the rapidly declining health of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, and the unwillingness of the Russian government to give him access to proper medical treatment, has also elicited warnings of further sanctions against Moscow from both the EU and the United States if Navalny is allowed to die in prison. These two developments, together with Moscow’s involvement in Syria, Libya, Georgia and Belarus, are already giving the West enough Russia headaches for its hard- pressed diplomats. Yet now another has been added to the list: the aggressive actions of the Russian intelligence agencies in Europe and North America. The incident in the Czech Republic is the latest in a long line of Russian intelligence operations targeting allied countries This week the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats after a seven-year investigation into an explosion at an ammunition depot near Vrbetice concluded that it was the handiwork of the Russian GRU military intelligence agency, and in particular of its special Unit 29155. Interestingly, the two Russian operatives unmasked as being behind this act of sabotage used the same aliases as the two agents implicated in the use of the Novichok chemical weapon against a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury in 2018. Two Czech citizens died in the explosion. Once the Czechs had gathered sufficient evidence to attribute the attack to the GRU, they clearly decided that it went well beyond the bounds of normal intelligence gathering and, to use the words of the Speaker of the Czech Parliament, constituted an act of “state terrorism”. The government also responded by removing the Russian nuclear energy supplier, Rosatom, from the list of bidders for a contract to build a new nuclear plant in the country. As Moscow inevitably acts as the innocent, aggrieved party when its hybrid operations in foreign countries are unmasked, it reacts aggressively and often disproportionately; in this case by expelling 20 Czech diplomats, enough to paralyse the work of the small Czech embassy in the Russian capital. At the time of writing, the Czech government is debating whether to expel more Russian diplomats in order to bring the Russian embassy in Prague down to the same skeletal manning level as the Czech embassy in Moscow. The Czech Foreign Minister appealed last Monday to his EU counterparts for solidarity and took a similar message to NATO’s North Atlantic Council on Thursday. He was no doubt inspired by the Salisbury precedent of 2018 when the EU and NATO allies responded collectively by expelling over 200 Russian diplomats from posts across Europe and North America. The incident in the Czech Republic is the latest in a long line of Russian intelligence operations targeting allied countries, either conducted by the GRU or its foreign intelligence counterpart, the SVR. These have involved assassins using chemical agents, like the use of polonium to poison former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2010. Polonium is highly toxic and easily spread. British police discovered traces of it in multiple locations across London, including hotels, public transport and Heathrow Airport. The Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury killed a British woman and injured a British police officer, as well as Skripal father and daughter. The clean-up and decontamination operation in Salisbury lasted weeks, closed several businesses and residential areas and ran into the millions of pounds in costs. Given the high toxicity of Novichok, it was extremely fortunate that more people were not killed or injured. Russian intelligence has also been behind multiple assassinations of oligarchs, who have broken with Putin and fled abroad to the UK and elsewhere, as well as of a Chechen opposition leader in a park in Berlin. The GRU and SVR have been behind destructive cyber-attacks against the German Bundestag and last year intruded into over 80 US companies and 13 US federal agencies by hacking into the Solar Winds software management system. The Russians have also been caught red-handed attempting to hack into the Organisations for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the World Anti-Doping Agency. The transatlantic allies and the EU have tended to reserve major sanctions and diplomatic responses for more classical acts of aggression The GRU and SVR have also been accused of interfering in elections in the US, North Macedonia and Moldova. Five years ago, Montenegro accused them of colluding with Serb intelligence to carry out a coup attempt during the election campaign in that country on the brink of its NATO membership. More recently, Bulgaria and Poland have expelled Russian diplomats after unmasking aggressive intelligence operations aiming to target their critical infrastructure and destabilise their societies through disinformation and political influence campaigns. The scope and brazenness of these Russian intelligence activities have led French President Macron to declare that it is time for EU countries to draw a clear red line against the misuse of diplomatic missions and normal intelligence gathering as a cover for nefarious and destructive types of political interference and coercion. In the past, the transatlantic allies and the EU have tended to reserve major sanctions and diplomatic responses for more classical acts of aggression involving military forces. Hence, after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a set of economic sanctions were imposed on Russia inhibiting technology transfers, particularly in the energy and deep sea drilling areas, as well as in certain investments in state enterprises, such as food processing. Russian exports were also limited, as well as its banking and financial transactions. These Crimea sanctions have been renewed by the EU every six months for the past seven years and annually by the US, Canada and the UK as well. Yet when it comes to Russian intelligence operations inside NATO and EU member states, or Russian crackdowns at home on the political opposition, the response had been much softer. Magnitsky laws, named after Russian whistle blower Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison after exposing massive fraud by the Russian tax authorities and their arbitrary shakedowns of foreign companies doing business in Russia, have been introduced to enable countries to impose sanctions on Russian state officials and entities implicated in human rights abuses. In both North America and Europe, the list of Russian officials subject to visa bans and asset freezes grows ever longer. Yet these officials frequently do not have bank accounts in New York, nor plans to spend their next vacation on the Cote d’Azur, so the punitive or deterrent value of individual sanctions is not clear. Biden’s approach signals to Moscow that the US will push back hard on Russian intelligence operations With the help of investigate NGOs, such as Bellingcat, that use social media data mining to discover the real identities of Russian intelligence agents and to tie them to the timing and location of specific attacks, countries have been able to name and shame those directly implicated. Yet once safely back in Russia they cannot be extradited and Putin even made Alexander Luganov, the presumed assassin of Litvinenko, into an MP to grant him immunity from prosecution. This background makes it all the more remarkable that the Biden administration has now decided to respond to Russian intelligence operations against the US – notably the Solar Winds cyber-attack, interference in the US 2020 election, manipulation of US political party polling data and an alleged bounty on US troops in Afghanistan – by adopting a much tougher package of sanctions. In addition to the traditional expulsion of ten Russian diplomats from the missions in New York and Washington, these include sanctions against eight Russian companies and limiting the access of US banks to Russia’s sovereign debt market in both rouble and non-rouble denominated currencies. This will make it harder for Moscow to float bonds or raise finance overseas. The US has also announced a readiness to carry out retaliatory cyber-attacks against Russia at a time of its choosing. In his Executive Order, President Biden also gave himself headroom to adopt further economic sanctions if he sees no let-up in Russia’s intelligence driven activities. The scale and sophistication of the Solar Winds cyber intrusion, in terms of the wide range of US entities attacked, the year-long duration of the attack and the enormous amount of sensitive data exfiltrated by Moscow, seems to have been the final straw in inducing Washington to not just punish Russia, but to demonstrate that it can disrupt it as well. At the same time, Biden’s offer of a summit to Putin was a sensible move to signal to Russia that the US will have a pragmatic relationship with Moscow, not being angry all the time but not believing in a reset either. Putin is likely to be in power for some time and will not change his behaviour fundamentally. Consequently, diplomacy cannot be a reward for good behaviour; otherwise there would not be much work for diplomats. So, Biden’s approach signals to Moscow that the US will push back hard on Russian intelligence operations while being open to cooperate with Moscow in other areas and ready to back down if the Kremlin demonstrates restraint. This strikes me as a realistic policy. The EU and NATO should now use this pause in the crisis to come up with a coordinated strategy The question now is: will the EU and the European allies follow the more rigorous US approach? Particularly when it comes to tightening existing sanctions and preparing future packages so as to have immediate response options ready and to deter future aggression. So far, the answer seems to be ‘no’. EU foreign ministers and NATO ambassadors listened politely to the Czech Foreign Minister when he asked for solidarity and then issued statements condemning Russia and pledging their support. Yet they did not adopt further sanctions at this stage. This is probably because they believe that there are already sufficient sanctions imposed on Moscow and that the threat of future measures against the Putin regime is a viable deterrent substitute for more actions now. Undoubtedly, given the extensive Russian military build-up on the border with Ukraine, the EU and NATO were careful not to provoke Putin and to give him a pretext or casus belli to encroach further on Ukrainian territory. De-escalation and coming up with a united but measured response were seen – rightly in my view – as the key to successful crisis management; a policy vindicated in the Kremlin’s decision to now pull its troops back from the border. This said, the EU and NATO should now use this pause in the crisis to come up with a coordinated strategy to deter and respond to aggressive Russia intelligence operations within their member states. This strategy needs to contain five key elements. First, a joint intelligence-sharing and investigative unit to rapidly determine who is behind these attacks and gather the evidence for public attribution. This could be based at Europol in The Hague, where the American FBI already has a liaison office. The UK has strong ties to Europol as well and used to lead the agency. NATO could establish a link between Europol and its intelligence fusion cells within its Joint Intelligence and Security Division. By systematically naming and shaming Russian operatives acting illegally on EU and NATO territory, indictments can be issued against them. These individuals may not face justice immediately, if at all, but it will certainly be difficult for them to travel to Europe or North America, or elsewhere in the world, thereafter. The tactics and covert operations of the Putin regime will also be exposed in the full glare of negative publicity. The EU should conduct a reflection on how it can put real substance into these mutual solidarity clauses Second is solidarity. It is important that countries attacked by aggressive intelligence operations not be left alone in facing the inevitable retaliation from Moscow. An attack on one has to be considered as an attack on all, especially where it involves loss of life and physical or economic damage. This makes a collective response and upping the diplomatic ante vital, even if it means issuing a joint statement or cancelling a trip to Moscow as an expression of displeasure. The EU and NATO need to work further together on their respective toolboxes of response options in the diplomatic and economic areas and ensure that they have the necessary legal authority and administrative processes in place in advance to take these measures rapidly once agreed. One useful step would be to expand the range of targets beyond Russian officials to the broader community of oligarchs and Russian banks, companies and research institutes. These are the people who rely on their connections with the West, and if they begin to feel the pain of sanctions, there is some hope that Putin will come under domestic pressure at home to rein in his intelligence agencies. Third, the EU and NATO need to look at ways of assisting their member states to recover from hybrid attacks. Based on recent experience, this assistance can comprise decontamination and clean-up equipment and specialist teams in the aftermath of chemical incidents, as well as rapid response teams to help states hit by cyber-attacks to get their IT infrastructure back up and running and to gather important forensics information for future attribution. NATO already has two cyber rapid response teams and the EU, under its PESCO defence cooperation programme, has a project led by Lithuania to pool and share national cyber defence expertise and capabilities more broadly within the EU, whether for early warning and detection, attack mitigation and post-attack recovery and investigation. Where diplomats are expelled from Russia, the EU’s External Action Service can see how it could staff a member state embassy or provide a normal diplomatic service until the diplomats of the country concerned are able to return. The EU Lisbon Treaty of 2010 contains two articles (24.7 and 222) which provide for solidarity and mutual assistance among EU states in responding to attacks. Article 42.7 has been invoked only once by France in 2015 in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris. Yet even then, very little happened and the use of Article 42.7 was mainly symbolic. So the EU should conduct a reflection on how it can put real substance into these mutual solidarity clauses in responding to attacks that fall short of a conventional military aggression, as this is handled by NATO under its Article 5 collective defence clause. Both the EU and NATO need to take a fresh look at the whole notion of resilience Fourth, the West needs to build in some headroom for itself in preparing now for further measures that will cover the full spectrum of escalation if required. We know that Russia is vulnerable on the economic front. Putin admitted the decline in living standards and the worsening economic outlook in his State of the Nation address to the Duma this week. So new steps such as expelling Russia from the SWIFT international bank clearance system or sharply curtailing the flow of Russian natural gas through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, if Germany cannot be persuaded to abandon the project altogether at this late stage, can hit the Kremlin where it hurts – in the pocketbook. These more stringent measures will obviously be more difficult for many EU and NATO countries than asset freezes on Russian prison guards. It is important to have this debate now and link the new measures in a scalable sequence to clearly defined trigger thresholds of Russian actions; for instance, the use of chemical weapons or explosives or cyber- attacks against critical infrastructure, government agencies or the financial system. Fifth, and finally, is resilience. The Solar Winds cyber-attack against the US demonstrated that despite years of government attention to cyber security and billions of dollars invested by both companies and government, Russian intelligence was still able to find and exploit five basic vulnerabilities in the Solar Winds software, and was immediately able to penetrate dozens of leading US companies, as well as the US Treasury, through the umbrella IT management tool. The attacks in the UK showed how easily Russian agents could smuggle dangerous substances into the country and the attack on the Czech Republic revealed the vulnerabilities of ammunition depots. So, both the EU and NATO need to take a fresh look at the whole notion of resilience and set higher and measurable resilience targets for critical national physical and digital infrastructure and leading private sector suppliers and supply chains. In sum, it is time to raise our game on aggressive Russian intelligence operations and turn what has been up to now the relatively low risk, high gains strategy of the Kremlin in undermining Western democracies and punishing its enemies abroad into its exact opposite: a strategy that is low gain and high risk, and therefore, increasingly counter- productive for the Kremlin. PO LIC Y B RIEF SUMMARY • Russia’s intelligence agencies are engaged in an active and aggressive campaign in support of the Kremlin’s wider geopolitical agenda. • As well as espionage, Moscow’s “special services” conduct active measures aimed at subverting and destabilising European governments, operations in support of Russian economic interests, and attacks on political enemies. • Moscow has developed an array of overlapping and competitive security and spy services. The aim is to encourage risk-taking and multiple sources, but it also leads to turf wars and a tendency to play to Kremlin prejudices. • While much useful intelligence is collected, the machinery for managing, processing, and assessing it is limited. As a result, intelligence’s capacity to influence strategy and wider policy is questionable. • Europe should take a tougher approach to Russian operations, investing resources and political will in counterintelligence, and addressing governance weaknesses that facilitate the Kremlin’s campaigns, including tougher controls on money of dubious provenance. EUROPEAN COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS ecfr.eu For his birthday in 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin was treated to an exhibition of faux Greek friezes showing him in the guise of Hercules. In one, he was slaying the “hydra of sanctions”.1 The image of the hydra – a voracious and vicious multi- headed beast, guided by a single mind, and which grows new heads as soon as one is lopped off – crops up frequently in discussions of Russia’s intelligence and security services. Murdered dissident Alexander Litvinenko and his co-author Yuri Felshtinsky wrote of the way “the old KGB, like some multi-headed hydra, split into four new structures” after 1991.2 More recently, a British counterintelligence officer described Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as a hydra because of the way that, for every plot foiled or operative expelled, more quickly appear. The West finds itself in a new “hot peace” in which many consider Russia not just as an irritant or challenge, but as an outright threat. For Europe, however, this threat is not likely to materialise in military form. Rather, it comes from covert, indirect, and political operations, typically conducted, controlled, or facilitated by the numerous Russian intelligence and security agencies, which strike from every side but are driven by a single intent. The agencies are active, aggressive, and well funded. They are granted considerable latitude in their methods, unconstrained by the concerns of diplomats or the scrutiny 1 “V Moskve proidet vystavka ‘12 podvigov Putina’”, Lenta.ru, 6 October 2014, available at http://lenta.ru/news/2014/10/06/putin1/. 2 Yuri Felshtinky and Alexander Litvinenko, Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within, second edition (London: Gibson Square, 2006). PUTIN’S HYDRA: INSIDE RUSSIA’S INTELLIGENCE SERVICES Mark Galeotti http://lenta.ru/news/2014/10/06/putin1/ 2 P U TI N 'S H YD R A : I N SI D E R U SS IA 'S IN TE LL IG EN C E SE RV IC ES w w w .e cf r.e u EC FR /1 6 9 M a y 2 0 16 of legislators. Furthermore, many of the people closest to Putin hail from the ranks of the Chekists (veterans of the security agencies, after the first Bolshevik political police, the Cheka) or siloviki (“men of force” from the military, security, and intelligence services). This is especially important given that many of the formal institutions of Russian foreign and security policy making – the Foreign and Defence Ministries, the Security Council (SB), the cabinet – have become nothing more than executive agencies where policies are announced and applied, not discussed and decided. Instead, decisions are made informally by Putin and his confidants and cronies. The Soviet KGB security service was powerful and willing to use espionage, destabilisation, and subversion, but was tightly controlled by a political leadership ultimately committed to the status quo. Under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, the state was weak, but the intelligence agencies doubly so. The agencies began renewing their powers during Putin’s first terms as president, but his policy was one of pragmatic accommodation with the West. Since Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012, though, the regime has unleashed increasingly powerful intelligence agencies in campaigns of domestic repression and external destabilisation, appearing to genuinely want to revise the structures of the international order. This is unlikely to change any time soon. It is therefore essential to look at these agencies in detail, exploring not only their missions but their strengths and weaknesses, and their position within the Putin system. This paper analyses the modus operandi and role of the agencies – the brutal competition between them, their forays into crime, and their willingness to take extreme measures, even targeted killings. The paper rejects the widely held belief that the intelligence agencies are the power behind the throne in Moscow. Their lack of unity and common goals, and their dependence on Putin, mean that they should be considered as merely another branch of the elite. Meanwhile, the highly personalised systems for evaluating intelligence and transmitting it to the president damage its quality and impact on policy. While the agencies should by no means be discounted, what emerges is that for all their apparent effectiveness, they have serious weaknesses. Unlike the hydra with its single controlling intellect, the agencies are often divided, competitive, and poorly tasked. They are certainly not in charge of the Kremlin, but nor is the Kremlin wholly adept at managing them. Their actions also undermine Russia’s long-term position. So, while this is undoubtedly a serious challenge, Europe should base its actions on what the agencies are, not what Europe fears they may be. This paper calls on European Union governments to adopt a zero-tolerance attitude to Russian intelligence operations in Europe, enhancing capacity sharing and counterintelligence and tracking the illicit movement of funds that lies behind these activities. By showing that aggression abroad has major costs, Europe can push the intelligence services to take a more cautious approach. The “warriors of the secret battlefield” Modern Russia has an array of intelligence and security agencies. In Soviet times, there were essentially only two: the KGB, which handled everything from foreign espionage to domestic security, and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) of the General Staff, which handled military intelligence. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the initial plan was to dismember the KGB, but Yeltsin began to backtrack as he encountered growing political resistance, thanks to the influence of KGB veterans who opposed reform. This was reinforced when another ex-KGB officer, Vladimir Putin, rose to the presidency in 1999-2000 after a brief stint as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Broadly speaking, there are four main agencies within Russia’s intelligence community. The most powerful is still the FSB, whose domestic security remit has increasingly e x t e n d e d t o c e r t a i n e x t e r n a l a c t i v i t i e s , i n c l u d i n g assassination. Not only does the Service have the closest historical ties to Putin, but its current director, Alexander Bortnikov, and his predecessor, Nikolai Patrushev (now chair of the Security Council) are personally close to the president. The FSB is also heavily involved in cyber security and offensive information operations of every kind. External intelligence gathering is primarily the domain of the Foreign Intelligence Service and the GRU.3 Both operate a mix of human intelligence officers under diplomatic cover, inside embassies but outside the diplomatic chain of command, and covert officers, or “illegals”. There are crucial distinctions in their missions and organisational cultures. The Foreign Intelligence Service is quite traditional, not least in its penchant for long-term, deep-cover spy rings, inherited from the KGB, and often of questionable cost-effectiveness. The GRU’s aggressive and risk-taking culture reflects its military background and its broad portfolio of assets, which include substantial electronic, satellite, and battlefield reconnaissance capabilities, and Spetsnaz (special forces). Though part of the General Staff apparatus, it enjoys a degree of operational autonomy and its chief can brief the president directly. The Federal Protection Service (FSO), which incorporates the Presidential Security Service (SBP), is the last of the major agencies. Its formal role is primarily to protect key government figures and locations, evident in its Kremlin Regiment and its supply of bodyguards to Putin’s security detail. However, it has expanded and diversified in several unexpected directions, including watching the security community itself. 3 Within the General Staff itself, the GRU is sometimes known simply (and confusingly) as the Main Administration, but GRU is much more widely used, including by Putin. 3 The wider security apparatus includes a whole range of other services. The Interior Ministry (MVD) is responsible not just for regular policing but also undercover operations against serious and organised crime, including terrorists and extremists — which in practice often also means peaceful dissidents — along with the Investigatory Committee (SK) and the Prosecutor General’s Office (GP). The Federal Anti- Drug Service (FSKN), which carries out limited operational intelligence gathering in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and the National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK), a coordinating body convened by the director of the FSB, complete the main security services. The new National Guard, announced in April 2016, is not an intelligence agency but a public security force – a type of Praetorian Guard that answers directly to the president. As such, it is not covered in this paper – although, given the empire-building habits of Russian agencies, that does not preclude it from seeking to acquire such a role in the future. Its creation does have wider implications: the FSKN has been subordinated to the Interior Ministry, and the domestic security agencies are warily watching this new rival in case it seeks to expand its mandate. It offers a case study of one of this paper’s main theses: that the security community in Russia is characterised by division, duplication, and deep institutional rivalry. The new nobility4 On the surface, this intelligence and security community may look broadly familiar to Europeans. However, there are institutional and cultural characteristics that, especially when combined with the nature of decision-making within the Russian system, mean that these agencies and the “new nobility” who work in them — to use former security chief Patrushev’s words — have a distinctive operational culture of their own.5 Overlapping responsibilities If the Soviet leaders tried to create efficiency and manageability by bringing nearly all security responsibilities under one agency, the KGB, their successors have adopted the opposite approach, resulting in numerous and growing overlaps between these agencies. 4 This section develops ideas raised in my article “Putin’s Spies and Security Men: His Strongest Allies, His Greatest Weakness”, Russian Analytical Digest, No. 173, 12 October 2015. 5 “Direktor federalnoi sluzhby bezopasnosti Rossii Nikolai Patrushev”, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 20 December 2000. Roles of Russia’s intelligence community Political intelligence Economic intelligence Military intelligence Active measures Counter -intelligence Political security Law enforcement Federal Security Service (FSB) Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) Federal Protection Service (FSO) Interior Ministry (MVD) Prosecutor General’s Office (GP) Investigatory Committee (SK) The Federal Anti-Drug Service (FSKN) National Anti-Terrorism Committee (NAK) Soviet KGB Main role Subsidiary role 4 P U TI N 'S H YD R A : I N SI D E R U SS IA 'S IN TE LL IG EN C E SE RV IC ES w w w .e cf r.e u EC FR /1 6 9 M a y 2 0 16 In Ukraine, for example, before the fall of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the Foreign Intelligence Service operated there as if it was a foreign country, but so did the FSB, as if it was not. The GRU had penetrated Ukraine’s security structures and was deeply embedded in Crimea, home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Even the Interior Ministry exerted influence over Kyiv’s law enforcement structures. None appear seriously to have anticipated the outcome of the Maidan uprising (although an Interior Ministry source told me that, a month before the uprising, they were warning that the regime’s mishandling of the protests had created a near-irreversible situation). Nonetheless, when Yanukovych fled to Russia, it was the hapless Foreign Intelligence Service that bore the brunt of Putin’s wrath, and sacrificial sackings and demotions ensued (this was confirmed by Source F).6 Through deft footwork, the FSB managed to escape blame even though Colonel General Sergei Beseda, of the FSB department tasked with operations in former Soviet republics, had visited Kyiv just ten days before Yanukovych’s flight. Indeed, it used the opportunity to claim primacy over future intelligence operations in Ukraine.7 This is the same principle of “competitive intelligence” adopted by the United States intelligence community but with a strong admixture of bloody-fanged social Darwinism. The blurring of boundaries encourages regular direct and indirect turf wars, and not just over the usual bureaucratic prizes of responsibilities, funding, and access to the leadership but also business opportunities for officers, and sometimes outright survival. The Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI) discovered this to its cost in 2003 when an alliance of the FSB, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and the GRU led to its cannibalisation, but this is only the most extreme example. “Silovik wars” have raged on-and-off since 2004. Most recently, a successful bid by the FSB to put its own man in charge of the Interior Ministry’s economic crime and corruption directorate in 2014 saw the mysterious death of its deputy chief. While being questioned by the Investigatory Committee, he apparently managed to evade his guards and leap from a sixth-floor window.8 More often, the competition is less visible and bloody and is fought through attempts to outperform and embarrass rivals, and acquire the information that will most please the powers that be. According to Source C, for example, the Foreign Intelligence Service and the GRU collect virtually identical economic information, and, at times, officers from both services even try to suborn their embassies’ economic staff in order to prevent their rivals from obtaining the latest data. 6 For a discussion of key sources, see the methodological note below. 7 Andrei Soldatov, “The True Role of the FSB in the Ukrainian Crisis”, Moscow Times, 15 April 2014, available at http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-true-role- of-the-fsb-in-the-ukrainian-crisis/498072.html. 8 Joshua Yaffa, “The Double Sting”, The New Yorker, 27 July 2015, available at http:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/the-double-sting. Likewise, GRU officer Colonel Viktor Ilyushin was expelled from France in 2014, in part for seeking to gather compromising information – kompromat – on President François Hollande’s personal life, the kind of political operation that would usually be the responsibility of the Foreign Intelligence Service or even the FSB.9 Indeed, the FSB has steadily expanded its political operations and their aggressiveness in the Baltic states and to an extent in Nordic Europe, rivaling even the GRU and the Foreign Intelligence Service.10 This competition can be a strength. It means that the agencies are often aggressive, imaginative, and entrepreneurial. It also means a degree of planned redundancy. In theory, it should provide multiple, independent perspectives. As journalist Yulia Latynina put it, “The war between the security services is our ‘separation of powers’. Some of them whisper into the president’s right ear, others into the left.”11 As will be discussed later, though, the political realities of late Putinism tend to militate against that. There are also serious drawbacks. The urge for quick results often encourages agencies to seize the low-hanging fruit. More to the point, as discussed later, the need to please the Kremlin inevitably competes with the integrity of the information gathering and analytic processes, which are vital if intelligence is to be of true value. Coordination and intelligence sharing is often limited and require direct “manual control” in the form of the intervention of Putin or his representatives. It was clearly a matter of utmost importance that the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics proceed smoothly and safely, for example. One of Putin’s trusted fixers, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak, managed the event. He convened a joint taskforce chaired by Oleg Syromolotov, veteran head of the FSB’s Counterintelligence Directorate, and including a first deputy interior minister and the deputy head of the National Anti-Terrorism Committee. The need for such high-power representatives from the key services was precisely because the normal level of coordination would have been inadequate. The government made clear that the officials’ futures depended on positive results and intelligence sharing. As Source B – the FSB insider – noted, “without such people pushing cooperation, knowing their heads were on the line, we would have continued to play our usual games.” 9 Vincent Jauvert, “Révélations sur les espions russes en France”, Le Nouvel Observateur, 24 July 2014. 10 For example, Latvia’s Constitutional Protection Bureau’s latest report specifically notes the use of blackmail and coercion by the FSB to recruit assets. “Several cases of Russian intelligence agents forcing Latvian residents to cooperate with them noticed last year”, LETA, 29 March 2016, available at http://www.leta.lv/eng/home/important/50C67943- 3C10-48FA-AECA-E5A9A47AD81A/. 11 Yuliya Latynina, “Bol’shoi brat slyshit tebya”, Novaya Gazeta, 11 October 2007, available at http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/33686.html. http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-true-role-of-the-fsb-in-the-ukrainian-crisis/498072.html http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-true-role-of-the-fsb-in-the-ukrainian-crisis/498072.html http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/the-double-sting http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/27/the-double-sting http://www.leta.lv/eng/home/important/50C67943-3C10-48FA-AECA-E5A9A47AD81A/ http://www.leta.lv/eng/home/important/50C67943-3C10-48FA-AECA-E5A9A47AD81A/ http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/33686.html 5 Wartime mindset Russia’s agencies regard themselves as not just sources of intelligence for decision-makers and advocates for particular policies, but also as instruments of direct action. This is especially evident within the GRU, which has established its reputation as a service willing to operate in highly unstable regions and through questionable and dangerous proxies and agents, from arms dealers such as Viktor Bout (in US prison since 2010) to the gangster- warlords, militias, and mercenaries of the Donbas.12 As a former GRU officer put it, “not all of us were Spetsnaz, but we like to think we all are like Spetsnaz.” However, the emphasis on coercive methods, active operations, taking chances, and risking international opprobrium reflects a wartime mindset across the agencies. Even before the worsening of relations with the West, they appear genuinely to have felt that Russia was under serious, even existential threat, which demanded extreme responses. There are three complementary aspects to this mindset, best illustrated by three quotations. The first is that “if the West loses, we gain.” This zero-sum perspective, reminiscent of the Cold War, comes from a group of Foreign Intelligence Service officers, as recounted second hand by a Russian academic. The second is that “Russia is at risk”, as expressed by Source B, an FSB officer, in 2014 (before Crimea). When pressed, he pointed to the Maidan uprising, which he genuinely believes was a CIA operation. This intelligent, well-travelled individual asserted that there was a concerted Western drive to force regime change on Russia through political subversion and to undermine Russia’s distinctive historical, religious, and social identity in order to weaken resistance to a global US-led hegemony. The third is “better action than inaction”, which Source F recounted hearing in a meeting with Foreign Intelligence Service officers. Source A, the former insider, agreed that although the agencies could be as bureaucratic as any Russian institution, there was a clear bias towards risk-taking, especially given the competitive environment in which they operate. Whether this is cause or effect, part of the process has been the diminution of the power of the Foreign Ministry (MID) and its capacity to curb overseas operations with potential negative political repercussions. The FSB’s cross- border raid to kidnap Estonian security officer Eston Kohver in 2014, for example, seems to have been conducted with minimal consultation with the Foreign Ministry. 12 I explore this further in “Putin’s Secret Weapon”, Foreign Policy, 7 July 2014, available at http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/07/putins-secret-weapon/. Monetising security For all their belief in their role as defenders of the state, many officers still eagerly exploit the legal and illegal economic opportunities at their disposal. Corruption remains endemic within the state apparatus, and the additional lack of transparency and control makes this a particular problem in the agencies. This is all the more serious considering the formidable assets that security and intelligence officers have at their disposal. They can use or, even more productively, threaten to use force or legal powers and have access to sensitive, dangerous, or simply bankable information. As a result, there are many tales of businesspeople being forced to pay protection – or, more often, to hand over a share of their enterprise – to security officers (especially from the FSB). These officers may also have contacts within the regular underworld that can be leveraged or with whom they can join forces. This reflects the general blending of money, crime, and political power in Russia, but is also a by-product of a marked willingness to use criminals as instruments of state security. There is, for example, ample evidence of Russian hackers being granted a degree of dispensation so long as, when called on, they attack targets of the FSB’s choice, from foreign states to liberal websites.13 Likewise, the Kohver incident in Estonia revolved around the kidnapped agent’s investigation of a cross-border cigarette- smuggling ring. It is implausible that a corrupt local FSB official would send an elite squad into another country and trigger a diplomatic incident just to protect a criminal sideline — or at least do this and get away with it. It is more likely that this was a joint venture in which the FSB, which has numerous and no doubt expensive political operations in the Baltic region, facilitated an organised crime venture in return for a share of the profits.14 This money, generated in Europe, becomes operational funds with no direct, provable connection to Moscow, ideal for bankrolling a useful political organisation here, bribing an official there. However, the more agencies are involved in such activities, the harder it is to be sure that the tail is not wagging the dog. An interesting case in point relates to the GRU’s tasking of their Canadian agent. Along with the usual fare of military, political, and economic information, he was asked to use his position at a military intelligence centre to find out what information the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had on Russian gangsters operating in Canada.15 Russian as well as Canadian interlocutors have separately suggested that this was not driven by strategic GRU tasking so much as someone within the chain of command realising that such information might be of commercial value to the gangsters. 13 Irina Borogan and Andrei Soldatov, “The Kremlin and the hackers: partners in crime?”, od:Russia, 25 April 2012, available at https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina- borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime. 14 Three of the smugglers were subsequently convicted on espionage charges in Estonia. 15 Leslie MacKinnon, “Spy Delisle's guilty plea preserves Navy secrets”, CBCNews, 11 October 2012, available at http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/spy-delisle-s-guilty-plea- preserves-navy-secrets-1.1143658. http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/07/putins-secret-weapon/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina-borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/irina-borogan-andrei-soldatov/kremlin-and-hackers-partners-in-crime http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/spy-delisle-s-guilty-plea-preserves-navy-secrets-1.1143658 http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/spy-delisle-s-guilty-plea-preserves-navy-secrets-1.1143658 6 P U TI N 'S H YD R A : I N SI D E R U SS IA 'S IN TE LL IG EN C E SE RV IC ES w w w .e cf r.e u EC FR /1 6 9 M a y 2 0 16 In other words, state assets were hijacked for criminal ends rather than vice versa. The overall result is a culture of corruption that permeates the agencies. It is hard to reach a definitive assessment of how far this undermines their operational capacity, but it does appear to influence even top-level decision-making. In 2014, for example, Investigatory Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin persuaded Putin to introduce a bill allowing criminal cases for tax crimes to be opened without consulting the tax authorities, creating sweeping new powers that are more useful for extortion than for policing.16 Likewise, the 2014 struggle over the Interior Ministry’s economic crime unit was almost certainly as much because this generates rents as for any political reason. The highest roof of all Ultimately, the security and intelligence community as a whole enjoys the favour of Putin. At the 2015 celebration of the annual Day of Security Service Personnel, he called them “strong and courageous people, true professionals who are reliably protecting Russia’s sovereignty and national integrity and the lives of our citizens, who are ready to perform the most complicated, responsible, and dangerous assignments.”17 This favour is neither uncritical nor unconditional, nor just a matter of sentiment. Rather, it reflects a shared perception of Russia’s situation and goals, and a pragmatic political alliance. The agencies have all done well under him, seeing their budgets, powers, and profiles grow. When the FSB was forced to absorb a 10 percent headcount reduction in 2015 in response to the financial crisis, it was a shock to an organisation that had seen its budget increase in real terms every year since 1999, even through the 2008-2009 rouble crisis.18 Their relative political muscle has also increased. Since Putin’s return in 2012, for example, the balance of power has shifted, and the spies appear far more willing to throw their weight around, both in Moscow and in the embassies. The Foreign Intelligence Service and GRU “legals” – agents under diplomatic cover – work within embassies, and their actions inevitably reflect on the Foreign Ministry. Both sources C and F observed that, in the earlier Putin presidencies, if their actions caused undue embarrassment, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would “get someone in from Yasenevo [the Foreign Intelligence Service headquarters] to shout at”, as Source C put it. Even the General Staff reportedly had to apologise when GRU operations went wrong. Yet this support is balanced by a keen sense of the political realities and contingent on the agencies delivering. For all his ties to the FSB, for example, Putin has consistently 16 Sergei Nikitenko, “Luchshe … Español APRIL 27, 2020 Why are US-Russia relations so challenging? Angela Stent The Vitals The United States’ relationship with Russia is today the worst that it has been since 1985. Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and what appears to be its continuing attempts to affect the 2020 election campaign have made Russia a toxic domestic issue in a way that it has not been since the 1950s. Its annexation of Crimea and launch of an ongoing war in southeastern Ukraine, plus its support for Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in his brutal civil war, and for Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro have raised tensions with the United States. President Trump came into office determined to improve ties with Russia. But the rest of the executive branch and the U.S. Congress have pursued tough policies toward Russia, imposing rafts of sanctions and expelling diplomats. The U.S. National Security Strategy declares Russia and China the two top threats to U.S. national security. At the best of times, U.S.-Russia ties are a mixture of cooperation and competition, but today they are largely adversarial. Yet, as the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States bear a unique responsibility to keep the peace and discourage the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons around the globe. Moreover, there are global challenges such as terrorism, climate change, governing the Arctic, and dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic that necessitate working together. The challenge is to find an acceptable balance between cooperation and competition and to compartmentalize the relationship in a more effective way than at present. · The United States’ relationship with Russia is today the worst that it has been since 1985. · Under Putin, Russia has become a centralized, authoritarian state and has returned as a global player, competing with the United States for influence. · Today’s global challenges require Russia and the United States to find the right balance between cooperation and competition.   A closer look How did we get to where we are today? After the USSR collapsed, many in the United States assumed that once the Russians had thrown off the shackles of Soviet communism they would want to join the West and become more like Americans and Europeans. The U.S sent political and economic advisers to work with officials and people in the nascent private sector to promote democracy and markets. But it turned out that centuries of Russian and Soviet history had produced a unique and distinct understanding of Russia’s place in the world and the form of government it should have. The 1990s, during which Russia was a more pluralist society than it is today, is now remembered as a time of chaos, enriching a few and impoverishing many, during which Russia was “humiliated” by having to accept an agenda largely dictated by the United States. Russia’s legitimate interests, so this narrative goes, were ignored by the United States. This includes Russia’s right to a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet states, meaning that they should not aspire to join NATO or the European Union. Today, Russia defines its security perimeter not as the borders of the Russian Federation, but as the borders of the former Soviet Union. It demands that the United States and Europe acknowledge this. So far, Washington has refused to accept that premise and insists on Russia’s neighbors’ right to choose their foreign policy orientation. Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has become a centralized, authoritarian state and has returned as a global player, competing with the United States for influence. Although it is weaker than the U.S. both economically and military, it has the ability to intervene around the globe and to thwart U.S. interests. Washington and Moscow have fundamentally different ideas about what a productive relationship would look like. There have been two periods in recent history when cooperation between the U.S. and Russia has worked well: the immediate post-9/11 period when Russia assisted the United States in the first phase of the war in Afghanistan, providing information which it had collected from its decade-long war there; and during the 2008-12 period of the “reset” between Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev, when Moscow and Washington cooperated on arms control, Afghanistan, Iran, and a range of other issues. Relations began to sour when Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, convinced that Hillary Clinton had been behind the demonstrators who had protested his return to power. The next year, Putin granted political asylum to Edward Snowden, the disgruntled NSA contractor who stole millions of classified documents and fled to Russia via Hong Kong. It rebuffed President Obama’s request to return him. Obama then canceled a planned summit with Putin. Russia’s actions in 2014 dealt another major blow to the relationship. Following months of popular protests, the pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia and was replaced by a pro-Western government. Shortly thereafter, Russian troops moved in to occupy and annex the Crimean Peninsula, which  had been part of Ukraine since 1954, thereby violating the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia, the United States, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom had pledged to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity. During the next few months, Russian-backed separatists and Russian troops wearing no insignia moved in to occupy the parts of the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine, ousting the legitimate local authorities. Since the spring of 2014, Russia and Ukraine have been fighting a war in the Donbas region in which 14,000 have died. Responding to this violation of sovereignty, the United States imposed sanctions on Russian individuals close to Putin and on Russia’s ability to access financial markets. Russia’s entry into the Syrian civil war in 2015 to support Bashar al-Assad has also created tensions with the United States, which was supporting groups opposed to Assad. Since then, Washington and Moscow have had to deconflict their air operations in Syria to prevent unanticipated collisions. After the U.S.’s partial withdrawal from Syria, Russian troops occupied former U.S. bases and supported Assad’s brutal assault on Idlib Province, which has produced a million refugees. The  decisive major blow to U.S-Russia relations was Russia’s cyber interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. As detailed in the 2019 Mueller Report, a troll factory in St. Petersburg worked round the clock to use social media to exacerbate the political polarization that existed in U.S. society, cast doubt among Americans about the legitimacy of the own democracy, and use these platforms to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Russia also tried to penetrate election machines in some states, raising the possibility that it could seek to change the outcome of future elections. The election interference via social media has continued into the 2020 electoral cycle. What are the most pressing issues for the next administration to tackle? The most immediate issue is the fate of the New START Treaty on strategic offensive weapons, set to expire on February 5, 2021. This is the latest iteration of the SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) Treaty signed by President Richard Nixon in Moscow in 1972. These treaties have for 50 years set limits on the numbers of warheads and delivery vehicles each side can have and they allow for on-site verification to ensure compliance. New START could be extended for another 5 years as-is while the two sides negotiate about what a future treaty that takes into account the modernization of nuclear weapons and the growth of cyber capabilities should involve. The Trump administration has insisted that any new treaty include China’s nuclear arsenal, but Beijing has demurred, arguing that its nuclear arsenal is far smaller than that of either the United States or Russia who between them possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weaponry. Both the U.S. and Russia have pulled out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, so that the only remaining piece of the arms control structure is New START. If this is not extended, then by 2021 there will be nothing limiting the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, with serious implications both for the proliferation of nuclear weapons and for a costly future arms race. Resolving the conflict in Ukraine will remain a very difficult. Although the United States is not included in the “Normandy Format”—Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine—that seeks to end the war, it still has an important role to play in negotiations for peace and in supporting Ukraine. It needs to resume a more active role. Russia’s increasingly close relationship with China represents an ongoing challenge for the United States. While there is little that Washington can do to draw Moscow away from Beijing, it should not pursue policies that drive the two countries closer together, such as the trade war with China and rafts of sanctions against Russia. The sanctions against Russia have impacted Russia’s economy adversely, but they have not led Russia either to moderate its actions in Ukraine or to diminish its cyber interference inside the United States. Moreover, the sanctions such as those on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany have adversely impacted U.S. allies but have had only a limited impact on Russia itself. The pipeline is delayed, but it will almost certainly be completed. Congressionally-imposed sanctions are a blunt punitive instrument carrying few incentives to induce Russia to rethink its policies. They should be re-examined in terms of their effectiveness as a tool for affecting Russian behavior. The COVID-19 pandemic may represent an opportunity for the United States to re-engage Russia by cooperating in battling the disease. But developing a more productive relationship with Russia will remain a major challenge for the United States. Washington and Moscow have different understandings of the drivers of world politics. Russia seeks to create a “post-West” world in which the United States is one of several great power players and can no longer dominate the international scene. It seeks U.S. recognition for its right to a sphere of influence. So far, no U.S. administration since the Soviet collapse has been willing to accept this premise.