The Russian parliament has just banned the nation’s intelligence officers from holding foreign residency permits. That is unless the permits have been explicitly authorized. Why this authoritarian action?
Well, part of Vladimir Putin’s new constitutional reforms, the action is designed to fix two problems. First, too many intelligence officers are being wooed by western intelligence services while abroad. Second, too many officers are copying the oligarch game and hiding their money and prospective futures outside of Putin’s easy reach.
On the first count, while Putin knows that while he can keep an intimidating gaze on his officers while they’re on Russian soil, doing so becomes a lot harder when they’re abroad. Once an SVR foreign intelligence officer is assigned to an embassy in Europe or South America, they become natural targets for recruitment by the CIA and other western services such as Britain’s SIS. The same principle is true of the GRU military intelligence service. Add to this concern that the SVR, GRU, and the domestic security service FSB are not known for great pay and conditions, the appeal of selling secrets at high prices becomes an interesting one. At least for a few officers.
That brings us to the foreign residences.
If, for example, an SVR officer is no longer able to meet his CIA handler near his Marseille apartment or Tuscan villa, he will find it harder and riskier to exchange the information which earns his foreign bank account boosts. The Duma’s action is thus not simply about preventing foreign residency, but preventing foreign residency so as to complicate Russian intelligence officer meetings with handlers abroad.
The second factor takes root in concerns over corruption. Since the end of the Cold War, and even before that, the Russian intelligence community has been beset by quite endemic corruption. Senior officers use their ranks and associated privileges to extort businesses, siphon state funds, and generally embezzle their way into lifestyles that they would not otherwise be able to afford. Putin and his cronies tolerate this patronage activity at high ranks, in that it allows them to maintain personal loyalty. But as this dynamic has extended, younger officers reaching mid-ranks have started to ask, if them, why not me? The basic point here is that these intelligence officers are not idiots. If they’re going to play the game, they want to share in the rewards. Again, that takes us back to the foreign residency permits.
What better way to launder CIA payments-for-Russian-secrets and ensure those payments can one day be used than by attaining foreign residency long before retirement? If you know that you can bail out to a Western residence the moment things get a bit too crazy and do so with a plausible excuse that you’re just heading to a long owned foreign residence, you’re going to think seriously about entertaining that option. Still, this isn’t just about corruption. The overlap of formal state intelligence activity, organized crime, and off-the-books operations now defines the Russian intelligence community. This means that even if an officer is not corrupt and simply wishes to serve their nation then retire to a peaceful, if not terribly lucrative retirement, they’ll fear that one day in that retirement, they might be viewed as a liability more than an asset. And retirement probably isn’t that fun when you have to wonder whether a former colleague is coming over with a Makarov or a bottle of Vodka.
Unfortunately for Putin, the Duma’s action can only paper over these vulnerabilities.
As long as the Russian intelligence community remains dedicated to damaging its American “main enemy” and the U.S.-led alliance system, Russian intelligence officers will find themselves priority targets for recruitment by a well-organized American intelligence machinery. Whether it’s the prospect of a new life in the west or a side retirement account, a good number of officers will continue to take up the offer of sharing secrets. As I say, the Kremlin knows it can keep a pretty good eye on its officers at home (though not always), but when those officers are assigned abroad, things get a lot riskier. That’s the catch-22. If the Kremlin keeps all its officers at home, it won’t be able to do very much to its enemies abroad.
