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Is Russia spying more – or are more spies just being caught?
Guardian ^ | Wed 26 Apr 2023 10.03 EDT | Shaun Walker

Posted on 04/26/2023 9:35:06 PM PDT by Zhang Fei

The combination of losing the spies under diplomatic cover and the end of 29155 had led Russia to turn more to its long-term illegals, said Grozev. “They’ve had to activate their sleepers, and when you do that you risk much more disclosure,” he said. Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell in The Americans,

Others speculate that there could be something more at play. John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, said he believed the recent detection of illegals was probably due to someone inside Russia passing information to the US or another western intelligence service.

“It’s almost impossible for counterintelligence services to uncover illegals, except some of these GRU illegals who seem to have had sequential passport numbers. It is almost always a human source,” said Sipher.

However, in a world of biometric data and computerised birth and death records, tracking down illegals has become slightly easier, as Grozev and Bellingcat have shown. Although illegals are trained individually, similarities in the “legends” used for their back stories or other operative quirks may make it easier for the capture of one to lead services to others.

A senior Greek official claimed that the country uncovered an alleged Russian illegal who lived in Athens, ran a knitting shop and claimed to be a Mexican-Greek photographer named Maria Tsalla through long hours of manually checking documents, after receiving a tip-off after the arrest of another alleged illegal couple in Slovenia.

“We were told that one of the illegals arrested in Slovenia claimed to be born in Greece, so we started looking through birth registries and looking for potentially doctored birth certificates,” said the official.

The search turned up a dodgy birth certificate in the name of Maria Tsalla, said the official, and that put the Greek authorities on to the scent.

(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Russia
KEYWORDS: 0warmonger; bidenlover; lolshaunwalker; moarukiebullsqueeze; putin; russia; shaunwalker; shaunwalkerlol; thegrauniad; ukraine

1 posted on 04/26/2023 9:35:06 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
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To: marcusmaximus; Paul R.; Bruce Campbells Chin; PIF; familyop; MercyFlush; tet68; BeauBo; TalBlack; ..

Ukraine ping

Russia’s spies operating under diplomatic cover are increasingly being ferreted out, but its illegals are also involuntarily coming in from the cold, thanks to the all-hands effort in Ukraine perhaps detracting from routine Russian counter-intelligence efforts.


2 posted on 04/26/2023 9:35:41 PM PDT by Zhang Fei (My dad had a Delta 88. That was a car. It was like driving your living room)
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To: Zhang Fei

Western counterintelligence is likely also making major gains due to discontent, fear, and principled opposition within Russia’s security services. Bluntly put, Putin’s regime is breaking down and anyone with a list of illegals or other choice secrets has something valuable to swap in return for a comfortable and secure retirement in the West.


3 posted on 04/26/2023 11:23:30 PM PDT by Rockingham
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To: Rockingham

In other words, the spies are Russian to make deals.


4 posted on 04/26/2023 11:52:37 PM PDT by chajin ("There is no other name under heaven given among people by which we must be saved." Acts 4:12)
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To: Zhang Fei

It is the expansion of this domestic Stasi/civilian informant thing they have built up in the West. Every neighborhood now has a portion of the people in it who were told to move there by the domestic intel op they have created, and they have been given the technological means to listen in everyone’s houses through the backdoored tech like laptop mics and Alexas, and they have been assigned to create detailed files on everyone. I would bet, 99%, somebody who lives near you and knows all about you, has been listening in to a conversation you have had, inside your home, at some point. And they put it in a file on you which they maintain, just like everyone in your neighborhood sector they are responsible for.

As that network has grown, it is inevitable it will end up noticing the people whose backstories don’t’ check out too well. Between that, and the fact Russia is standing up to the Cabal of the West, it was inevitable the West would flex by burning a bunch of their spooks.


5 posted on 04/27/2023 12:03:15 AM PDT by AnonymousConservative (DO NOT send me sensitive information - http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/surveillance)
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To: Zhang Fei; SpeedyInTexas; marcusmaximus; ought-six; Timber Rattler; Monterrosa-24; Sunsong; ...

Based on the number of active pro Putin people here at FR I have the destinct impression that there are sleeper FReepers who have been registered over the years, especially at times of crisis the US has had. Now they are being activated in chunks of 6 to a dozen, and as Ukraine supporters keep after then they will become quiet, and a new batch seems to show up to carry on the dictator’s work.

Of course there are also some freepers who probably just like Russia better than Ukraine.


6 posted on 04/27/2023 12:22:48 AM PDT by gleeaikin (Question authority!)
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To: gleeaikin

There are things out there you have to see to believe. In the US, a hostile domestic surveillance/civilian informant network straight out of the East German Stasi. Check my history. Ten years ago I was a naive normie like everyone else, who wrote a book on an interesting thing about politics and biology. I thought it was cool. Surveillance/intelligence thought it might accumulate followers and I had stepped over the line. I didn’t even know there were lines.

I can play you a video right now, of the ten year old kid next door, from the family they moved in, talking about turning surveillance on me with another child in the domestic surveillance machine. Its one of about thirty kids this thing is running in the local school, adults directing the kids to help them create files on the other kids. And I have come to understand it is like that in every school in the US.

Domestic intel maintaining control for those in power, by scrutinizing every kid, and making sure no problem children with high IQs who believe in freedom and decency rise too high. They even introduce kids to drugs, sex, porn, little things or big things to get them off their track if they look set to rise too high.

From there, you see domestic intel everywhere. I do not go into a store to shop that I am not followed in by this thing. It is on street corners, in schools, driving around, everywhere. It literally is the Stasi in the US. And there are Freepers here who know all about it and are cool with it.

And from there you go deeper. This thing, as big as the Stasi, (and why not, we are like five thousand times richer than East Germany why wouldn’t they build it here?) - They way it is organized, Watching everyone at the local level, it didn’t miss 9/11. Either it let it happen, or maybe it even helped it happen, to get those surveillance powers on steroids.

Go back and look at my history. I was just like you. But there are things you can see, and understand.

Putin is nothing as a problem, compared to whatever this intel thing is, because it is behind Biden, it is behind the trannies, the kid-grooming, the election rigging, the surveillance in the neighborhoods and schools (which you will find out about one day), the destruction of our economy, the looting of our treasury, the destruction of the US, and for some reason this thing wants Putin to lose in Ukraine.

It is Cool if you disagree. I was totally pro-invade Afghanistan, I supported Bush in Iraq without question, I thought GW was a salt of the earth guy. Now I know, he knew about the surveillance too, which means he knew 9/11 was not like it seemed. Which means he knew all the wars from there were not what they seemed, and he sent those young guys off to get burned and blown up, for this thing that is destroying the US right now. I came around, and am even now kind of antiwar. Which, if you knew me ten years ago - Wow.

If I could do that, you’ll come around someday too, if you keep looking.


7 posted on 04/27/2023 3:11:54 AM PDT by AnonymousConservative (DO NOT send me sensitive information - http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/surveillance)
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To: Zhang Fei

“Is Russia spying more – or are more spies just being caught?”

Or are more Russian agents being ‘invented’, such as here, since the start of the Ukraine War.


8 posted on 04/27/2023 4:32:45 AM PDT by BobL
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To: Zhang Fei

Chinese spying is the much greater threat — because our elites prefer the Chinese.


9 posted on 04/27/2023 5:11:56 AM PDT by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: Zhang Fei

Seems like they are invoking the spy charges with a spring trigger right now and sometimes these are just sympathizers


10 posted on 04/27/2023 5:39:44 AM PDT by dila813
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To: Zhang Fei

Russia hasn’t conducted a propaganda operation against the West like this since the end of the Cold War. I’m not surprised that they are calling up assets they haven’t used before. The surprising thing is how many of their domestic assets, their non-Russian “allies”, are on the right nowadays instead of the left. And make no mistake, these allies are not all Russian sleeper agents. Many of them are native westerners who have just been hoodwinked into carrying Russia’s water for them, just as the leftist labor and anti-war movements were in the past.


11 posted on 04/27/2023 5:42:52 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: BobL

Well, you know, if you don’t want to be wrongly accused of being a Russian agent, you can always stop acting like one.


12 posted on 04/27/2023 5:43:59 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Boogieman

“Well, you know, if you don’t want to be wrongly accused of being a Russian agent, you can always stop acting like one.”

Well, you know, if you don’t want to be wrongly accused of being a Neocon Plant on this site, you can always stop acting like one.


13 posted on 04/27/2023 5:48:01 AM PDT by BobL
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To: BobL

Well, that’s not the way to stop acting like a Russian agent.


14 posted on 04/27/2023 5:50:05 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Boogieman

“Well, that’s not the way to stop acting like a Russian agent.”

Well, that’s not the way to stop acting like a Neocon Plant.


15 posted on 04/27/2023 6:02:12 AM PDT by BobL
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To: BobL

Hate to break it to you, but the “I know you are but what am I?” game doesn’t impress anyone beyond about the 3rd grade.


16 posted on 04/27/2023 6:06:26 AM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Boogieman

“Hate to break it to you, but the “I know you are but what am I?” game doesn’t impress anyone beyond about the 3rd grade.”

Same here.


17 posted on 04/27/2023 6:16:03 AM PDT by BobL
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To: gleeaikin

I’ve noticed these accounts popping up too.


18 posted on 04/27/2023 8:03:50 AM PDT by MeganC (There is nothing feminine about feminism. )
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To: AnonymousConservative

I remember when you posted this, and I found it quite interesting . Now it’s frightening!

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3042803/posts


19 posted on 04/28/2023 4:50:18 PM PDT by Don W (When blacks riot, neighborhoods and cities burn. When whites riot, nations and continents burn)
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