Looking at some of the recent headlines in the news, you might almost feel as if you stepped back into a surreal time when the Cold War was not over and we lived with the constant threat that a war full of icy rhetoric could become hot with bullets and bombs. Putin, that lovable New/Old…
Category: Russia
Espionage and Cold War Files: Extraordinary Lecture by Legendary Soviet Mole and Spy Kim Philby Emerges
A videotaped lecture by Kim Philby, one of the Cold War’s most recognizable espionage figures, has been unearthed in the archives of the Stasi, the Ministry of State Security of the former East Germany. During the one-hour lecture, filmed in 1981, Philby addresses a select audience of Stasi operations officers and offers them advice on…
Moscow Mercenaries in Syria
As Syrian forces push their advantage against the Islamic State, it is increasingly clear that there are Russians on the ground with them. Some are Spetsnaz special forces, there for recon and forward air control, but others are mercenaries, working for a shadowy outfit in St. Petersburg. Increasingly, the Kremlin is waking up to the…
Espionage Files: A CIA Officer’s Long, Futile Secret War
WASHINGTON — In Douglas Laux’s final days as a CIA officer, the futility of his mission prompted him to quote George Orwell to his boss. Laux had spent months in 2012 working with various Middle Eastern nations that were trying to ship arms to Syria to help disparate rebel groups there. But it had become…
Espionage Files: CIA Trained Spy Allegedly Arrested in Russia
The Russian government says it has arrested a senior Ukrainian intelligence officer, who was allegedly trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and tasked with infiltrating the Russian secret services. In a statement published on Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as FSB, said the alleged infiltrator is a “senior level employee” of the…
Putin’s Attack Choppers and Merc’s are Winning the War for Assad
The George W. Bush parallel was lost on very few analysts when Vladimir Putin proudly announced that he was withdrawing a significant amount of Russia’s forces from Syria because their “mission is accomplished.” The announcement came just four days after the Atlantic published an overview of “The Obama Doctrine,” wherein U.S. President Barack Obama told journalist…
Military Defense News: Russian T-90 Tank vs American TOW Missile…T-90 Can Take A Lickin’ But Keep on Tickin’
For all the videos coming out of the Syrian civil war, a one minute, 31-second clip of a U.S.-made TOW missile slamming into a T-90 tank got more attention than most. In the video uploaded in February, Russia’s most advanced operational battle tank met one of the United States’ main tank killers on the battlefield….
Cold War Files: Tolkachev, The CIA’s Most Valuable Soviet Asset in the 80’s
How a troubled past turned a Soviet military engineer into one of the CIA’s most valuable spies. His family and friends called him Adik. His eyes were the color of ash, under a broad forehead and thick brown hair, with a crook in the bridge of his nose from a boyhood hockey accident. He stood…
Espionage Files: The Return of Wetwork
Putin’s Kremlin Employs assassination abroad as State Policy in a manner not seen in Moscow since Stalin By John R. Schindler This week’s announcement by a British court that Russian spies murdered Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006, made global headlines. Particularly because the massive report, based on a multi-year investigation, concluded that the…
Espionage Files: Russian Spies Pose as Diplomats in Sweden
Cold War 2.0 is in Full Effect!! The Great Game is again being Played. -SF The most significant intelligence risk against Sweden comes from Russian spies, often posing as diplomats or business people, according to the Swedish security service Säpo, which has just released its annual report. Swedish military confirm Russian warship sighting (02 Oct…