Putin’s paranoia reaches fever pitch with spate of espionage claims
Russia’s principal Federal Security Service (FSB) is investigating hundreds of people in treason and espionage-related cases in what Russians often describe as a paranoid sense of “spy mania.”
It’s getting worse. In the first six months of last year, an estimated three people got sentenced for espionage. This year, however nine times more people went to prison for alleged spying, according to Moscow-based newspaper Kommersant.
The Kremlin’s counter-intelligence finds spies among Russian citizens and those from Ukraine. There are up to two million Ukrainian refugees in Russia and more than five million in the annexed territories. So when a western diplomat gets detained for spying, nobody is surprised.
On Tuesday, Russia announced it would expel British diplomat, Edward Wilkes, on allegations of espionage, accusing him of intentionally provided false information when he entered Russia. The FSB Security agency said in a statement that “counter-intelligence work had revealed an undeclared British intelligence presence under cover of the national embassy in Moscow.” Downing Street has denied the claims.
It follows an incident in August when Moscow revoked accreditations of six British diplomats on accusations of espionage, forcing them to leave the country. Again, Downing Street denied the allegations, saying it was “not the first time that Putin’s government has made malicious, baseless accusations against our staff.”
Ivan Pavlov, a top Russian defence lawyer specialising in espionage cases said the case fits a pattern of Kremlin paranoia.
“I am not surprised that a British diplomat was expelled in the increasing spy mania and escalating spy war, it’s good they did not arrest him but just kicked [him] out,” he said in an interview with The i Newspaper.
Pavlov launched a firm, Team 29, providing legal services to people accused of treason and espionage cases in 2021, just two months before President Vladimir Putin announced the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“According to our data, the FSB has started more than 800 espionage-related cases since the beginning of the war in Ukraine,” Pavlov said. “The British case is one in hundreds currently being investigated – this is a war time.”
Russia hunts spies all over its vast regions, there are news reports of arrests nearly every week. The FSB security service arrested a 23-year-old woman in annexed Crimea on October 18, accusing her of espionage and collecting information about Russian military bases for Ukrainian intelligence.
On November 1, a former employee of the US consulate in Vladivostok, Robert Shonov, went to prison for four years “for secret collaboration with a foreign state.”
In August, the high-profile journalist Evan Gerskovich was released in a US prisoner swap after more than 16 months in custody. He had been sentenced to 16 years in jail for espionage and has always maintained his innocence.
The rise in the number of cases makes it seem the era of Cold-War espionage is back, with Russian spies also arrested abroad.
This year Russian citizens accused of working for Russian intelligence agencies were arrested in Norway, France, Slovenia, Poland, Ukraine and other countries.
“There is a hugely increasing political demand for catching spies in Russia,” Pavlov said. “Authorities encourage the spy mania: constant arrests and spy news are meant to make an impression both internationally and domestically.”
Details of treason and espionage cases remain classified until court hearings. Since many independent Russian media outlets fled the country in 2022 in a crackdown on reporting, Russian defense lawyers are the only source of information about these highly secret cases.
Very little was known about FSB’s charges against 33-year-old Russian-American Ksenia Karelina, who was detained in Russia under her maiden name in February for 14 days (She is also referred to as Ksenia Khavana). In August, she was convicted of treason and sentenced to 12 years in a Russian penal colony.
Her crime? According to Russian state media, she had donated $51 to a US-based group helping Ukrainians. Her lawyer said she admitted transferring the funds but did not intend for them to be used for “anti-Russian actions” and they would appeal the verdict.
“State treason charges can stretch like rubber and turn into espionage charges or get classified as ‘helping’ foreign groups involved in activity threatening Russian security,” Pavlov said.
“Karelina’s case or the detention of a British citizen warm up the patriotic awareness. ‘See, there are spies all around us and special services are fighting against them.”
Adding to this climate of fear and paranoia is the severe political repression ordinary Russians experience. The number of victims is growing by day. The Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights group Memorial counts 784 political prisoners.
“Neither Putin, his close circle trust anyone, they see spies all around them, there are constant arrests of senior military officers for stealing money, which looks like spiders eating each other in a can,” an ex-KGB captain in exile, Gennady Gudkov, said in a recent interview.
Some cases are top secret for reason nobody understands. A 32-year-old journalist Nika Novak was sentenced to four years on Tuesday for “confidential cooperation with a foreign organization,” according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The freelance journalist, who was working for Radio Free Europe, is another example of such repression from Moscow’s authorities.
“Some cases demonstrate complete absurdity: Novak was accused of ‘confidential’ collaboration with REF/RL,” Pavlov said. “If one communicates in a messenger, FSB considers that confidential correspondence – that’s a sign of increasing paranoia.”
“Nika Novak’s four-year prison sentence handed behind closed doors in the Russian Far East demonstrates that the Russian authorities are continuing their relentless, silent crackdown on journalists,” said the Gulnoza Said, the CPJ’s program coordinator for Europe and Central Asia.
“Russian authorities should not contest Novak’s appeal and immediately release her and all other jailed.
