EXPERT OPINION / PERSPECTIVE — Ask any Russian intelligence officer about “naruzhka,” and you’ll see them nod knowingly. It’s the term for physical, trailing surveillance: watchers on the street who follow targets, track meetings, and report patterns. The Russians are experts at it, and they have been for centuries, dating back to the Tsarist Secret police, the Okhrana, and even further to Ivan the Terrible’s oprichniki, the brutal enforcers of his regime. Surveillance is a subject that dominates Russian society and Russian espionage, and it also dictates how Russian intelligence officers (RIOs) conduct counter-surveillance and surveillance detection. The Russian intelligence services (RIS) still lean heavily on surveillance as both a protective and offensive tool. Given such an all-compassing presence in Russian society, the term "surveillance" and its connotations in Russia are worth exploring to better understand Russia, its state, society, and our adversaries.
Russians have a saying, “the walls have ears,” and sometimes follow it with “and the streets have eyes.” Studying in Russia in the early 1990s as an exchange student, I was repeatedly warned by my friends with this expression. It was their way of telling our group of American students that no matter how welcome we felt— and Russians have some of the best hospitality in the world when you are welcomed by them— the state was still suspicious. We came to understand very quickly that there were minders among us: Russian students and professors who reported on us back to the FSB, the successor of the KGB.
Some of our group of students were even “soft-pitched.” For example, in one case, a fellow student with a military background was asked whether he would like to meet with the FSB to discuss how interesting the Russian internal security service was (not exactly a soft approach, really). These blunt and clumsy attempts went unanswered, but the point was clear: the state was not just watching; they were operationally targeting our group of future soldiers, researchers, academics, and in at least one case, a future CIA officer.
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Anyone who has studied or lived in Russia over the past three decades no doubt has had similar experiences. But the bar of intimidation has risen dramatically in recent years. With dissidents, journalists, and even athletes targeted for intimidation, beatings, arrest, and even murder, there is no safe haven in Russia any longer for foreign citizens. They are used as targets to be entrapped for hostage exchanges with the West. The goal is to swap civilians for RIOs for the latter to escape their failings when arrested and convicted abroad.
Russians live in a state of constant fear, especially with the war in Ukraine, since opposition to the war, in any form, is now threatened by jail time. Anyone who may be a threat to the regime is subjected to overwhelming surveillance of their person, electronic communications, and contacts. The FSB has many resources at its disposal, including access to all ISPs and phone companies by law. In the early 2000s, the Russian Duma quietly passed laws giving the FSB access to all communication companies in Russia without the need for any warrants. It was the first step in creating their modern surveillance state and an early sign under Putin that democracy was dying.
Inside Russia, surveillance teams from the FSB number in the many thousands. Their origins lie in the old KGB 7th directorate. Still, their mission remains the same: monitor diplomats, suspected foreign intelligence officers, journalists, NGO workers, businesspeople, and ordinary Russians who cross the regime’s lines. The teams are, unfortunately, among the very best in the world at surveillance, given their long history of practice.
Surveillance schools in Leningrad (St. Petersburg), in particular, were known as the best in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Young surveillance team members from the KGB, GRU, and other services of the Soviet Union were trained in the art of on-foot and vehicle surveillance, effective radio communications, and spotting intelligence tells of possible espionage operations. Today, it is no different. The FSB, in particular, devotes considerable resources to surveillance work in Moscow and across Russia in every major city of its vast surveillance apparatus. They are increasingly assisted by technology and a vast array of cameras across the country.
In Russia, all universities, think tanks, and defense contractors, have assigned security officers, what the Russians call an “OB,” who monitor the foreign contacts, make Russians report on their foreign friends, and even many of their Russian ones. The OB is usually an FSB officer, but if not, they are a cooptee of the service, reporting directly to a UFSB or a regional office across Russia. The OBs, in turn, enlist networks of agent-reporters who are only too eager to report on the travel, potential misdeeds, disloyalty to the regime, or other offenses of all those they monitor. Russia today has a network of informers to rival Stasi East Germany, Nazi Germany under the Gestapo, or any other despotic regime, including North Korea and China of today (both of whom, admittedly, may also contend for the gold and silver on despotic modern surveillance states, together with Russia).
The all-encompassing nature of the Russian surveillance state, which includes monitoring by city cameras (supplemented by drones now too), communications, and in-person surveillance, makes it clear that RIS surveillance is not confined to diplomats or foreigners suspected of intelligence affiliation. Academics, journalists, and corporate leaders can find themselves under observation or pressure when Moscow sees strategic value in them. Awareness of surveillance indicators—and how to respond—remains essential.
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Unfortunately, for decades, Westerners traveling to Russia as academics, athletes, NGO workers, and others have been naïve on this score. The refrain is frequently that “I am no one of interest, they’ll leave me alone.” The RIS never did and never will. The pressure for the Russian services, in particular the FSB, to prove worthy of their giant bureaucracy and corrupt budget means they will manufacture spy cases when they can’t find real ones.
They map the routines of foreign officials, political or business leaders. Their goal is to decide if those targets are viable recruits, potentially, or targets for other operations, like extortion, “direct action,” or even assassination attempts in Russia and abroad. This leads to another underappreciated aspect of Russian intelligence and espionage that permeates their society: setups, tricks, and double-agent operations, which the Russians call “operational games.” (That will be the topic of a future “Kremlin Files” column in The Cipher Brief.)
On Russian surveillance, the warning remains clear, and the potential risks are stark. Unfortunately, for all the beauty to be found in Russian history, its cultural sites and heritage, and with their people, traveling to the Russian surveillance state under this corrupt and authoritarian regime holds incredible risk for foreigners, and even for Russian citizens themselves. It will not change until the RIS no longer has the dominant role in society. Laws and checks on power don’t exist in the Russian services. Surveillance, in fact, guides the functioning of the Russian state, and the streets continue to have eyes- everywhere.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying US Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
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