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.
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.
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.
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.