Crisis over Ukraine and European Security

In a new report on Russia’s unconventional operations during the invasion of Ukraine released Wednesday by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the authors found that at “a fundamental level the Russian special services lack self-awareness, or at least the honesty to report accurately about their own efforts." "[T]here appears to be a systemic problem of overreporting one’s successes and concealing weaknesses to superiors,” analysts Jack Watling, Oleksandr V. Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds note, describing how Russian spies had told their superiors that an agent network they had set up in Ukraine would proactively support Moscow if Russia invaded.

Moscow has looked to place senior agents in Ukraine to head up their own networks, rather than handling operations from Russia. Although some of those working on the Kremlin's behalf have been identified, many, and their operations, have not yet been exposed, the report's authors warned. "A significant part of Russia's agents both in Ukraine and in other countries continue to actively operate," they wrote.

"It is evident," says the report, "that the Russian special services managed to recruit a large agent network in Ukraine prior to the invasion and that much of the support apparatus has remained viable after the invasion, providing a steady stream of human intelligence to Russian forces."