INTELLIGENCEAfter Six Months of War, Russia's Intelligence Agencies Have Adapted

By Reid Standish

Published 26 August 2022

While the scale of Russia’s battlefield setbacks have taken center stage in recent months, it was Russia’s intelligence agencies — most notably the Federal Security Service (FSB) — that failed to bring down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government or incite any form of pro-Russian support as tanks pushed into Ukraine. How did Russia’s intelligence agencies get things so wrong and why did the networks they had cultivated for years in Ukraine fail to yield results?

It was supposed to be a lightning strike that could see Russian forces in Kyiv after three days of fighting, but six months after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin instead finds itself locked in a grinding war that has left its military and intelligence services humiliated.

While the scale of Russia’s battlefield setbacks have taken center stage in recent months, it was Russia’s intelligence agencies — most notably the Federal Security Service (FSB) — that failed to bring down Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government or incite any form of pro-Russian support as tanks pushed into Ukraine.

Instead, Russian forces came up against widespread resistance from the Ukrainian military and its citizens and the Kremlin has had to deal with a government in Kyiv that has held firm and rallied international support.

But how did Russia’s intelligence agencies get things so wrong and why did the networks they had cultivated for years in Ukraine fail to yield results?

To find out more about how the war has changed Russia’s intelligence services and how their misjudgments have shaped events on the ground, RFE/RL spoke with Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist who has reported on Russia’s intelligence services for decades and is now a fellow in London with the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

RFE/RL: Despite repeated failures, the FSB and leaders from other intelligence agencies remain in their positions and the agency has regrouped. What do you think these agencies have learned after six months of war in Ukraine?
Andrei Soldatov:
 We can see after six months that the war has affected the Russian security services in a very significant way.

If you compare with some other recent wars, such as Afghanistan in the 1980s or Chechnya [in the 1990s and 2000s], we have seen far more significant changes [in Ukraine]. Before the war, only two departments inside of the FSB were involved in dealing with Ukraine. These were the 5th Service, which was in charge of collecting intelligence in Ukraine and then also the Counterintelligence Department, which [was] focused on hunting down Ukrainian spies and attacking journalists and activists.