When bringing to Moscow a delegation from the House of Lords back in the summer of 2002, I was anxious lest they be misled: not by the Russians, of course, who were at sixes and sevens after President Putin's decision to open the intelligence books to the Bush administration after 9.11, but by our own … Continue reading GRU History: Ivashutin, Master of Counter-Intelligence

The dislocation of the massive Russian ice shelf in 1992 and its subsequent drift out into the open sea has long since defied any expert prediction. Some optimists, particularly in Washington D.C., naively believed political democracy would take firm hold under Boris Yeltsin. Even as he collapsed in a drunken stupor Yeltsin was painted as … Continue reading Is Russia Becoming Africa?

How good investigators, whether policemen or secret service analysts, do their job is a fascinating subject, as absorbing as reading the best of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. In The  Adventure of the Silver Blaze Holmes noticed the odd fact, which the usual, clumsy official detective completely failed to comprehend: that, when the racehorse was … Continue reading Russian Assassins’ Entrepot in France

The German Government today declared two Russian "diplomats" persona non grata. Given Berlin's persistent attempts to improve relations with Russia, this comes as yet another blow to Moscow's hopes of reaching some kind of understanding with the EU on a sustained basis and remove the sanctions originally imposed as a result of the Russian invasion … Continue reading Another Skrypal’

Just because President Trump withdrew American forces from north-east Syria, it did not mean he looked with favour on the invasion and occupation carried out by President Erdogan of Turkey. His only purpose was to localise the conflict; to give back to those in the region the responsibility for what occurs there. So it should … Continue reading Israeli Aid to the Kurds?

The latest in the new series of intelligence documentaries on Zvezda tv, broadcast yesterday, gives us the life and work of the notorious spy Kim Philby. It was, as were the others, put together from the archives at Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) and the attentive viewer will see that the editor-in-chief, also one of the … Continue reading Kim Philby and the Cambridge Five

Today Zvezda TV followed up with a new documentary in its serial on legends of secret intelligence with a piece on William Fisher, the Russian who grew up in the North-West of Britain while his parents were in exile from the Russian empire. It is a fascinating story of how he became a key radio … Continue reading Documentary on William Fisher