Impact of Russian Diplomat Expulsions on Intelligence Operations
The British Government has confirmed that it is expelling
the Russian defence attache, reduce the length of diplomatic visa accreditation
for diplomats and remove the diplomatic status of certain Russian Government
sites in the UK. This is a significant move and one that reflects the deeply
challenging state of Anglo-Russian relations. But why is it so significant and
does it really matter?
All governments who maintain diplomatic links with other
nations will usually have a varied range of facilities at their disposal. There
will be a main Embassy / High Commission building, potentially some accommodation
– perhaps in a diplomatic compound, and potentially some outstations. Larger
nations will see a satellite network of consulates designed to provide regional
support (e.g. the UK has no less than 8 consulates in the USA in addition to the
Washington Embassy). Some nations will consolidate all their activities onto
one site, usually the Embassy, which enjoys protected status in international
law, while others will have outstations related to specific projects around a
country – for example, in Africa it was not uncommon to see an FCO High Commission
and also a DfID facility elsewhere in country. It is still occasionally possible to see
facilities split apart from the main diplomatic operation – for example in
London some nations maintain a Defence Section or a Trade or Consular section
separate to their main embassy locations.
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The Kremlin |
In the case of Russia, the main Russian Embassy also had,
until 08 May 2024, separate facilities in north London for its trade and
defence sections, as well as a country estate purchased in 1946 in Sussex (Seacox
Heath) which functions as the Ambassadors residence. These all had diplomatic
status and were essentially given the same protections as the main Embassy site.
There is also a polite fiction maintained by many Governments
that the presence of embassies is purely to foster good relations between
nations. In reality most countries with a highly capable intelligence service
will often make use of their diplomatic real estate around the world to carry
out intelligence gathering operations on their hosts, or third parties. Sometimes
the relationship is benign – the UK, for example, maintains intelligence
liaisons with the ‘Five Eyes’ member states where no spying is conducted,
and the role of intelligence officials is
to build deeper working links with their host nation to mutual benefit. By contrast in other nations, it has been
common practise for most countries to use their diplomatic staff in some form
of intelligence gathering function, trying to recruit useful local nationals or
helping collect intelligence in other ways to build understanding of how their
host nation was evolving.
Sometimes diplomats get caught in the act of doing something
‘naughty’ and after a quick and sometimes high profile response, find themselves
leaving the country quickly. It is rare for nations to make too big a deal of
this sort of incident though as all players know that everyone benefits from
maintaining a presence on the ground. The general sense seems to be that if you
get caught, you get a metaphorical slap on the wrist, accept disruption to in
country networks and then after an appropriate amount of time you begin the
game again. Meanwhile your seemingly aggrieved host nation is likely behaving
in an identical manner in your own nations capital…
Expulsions are a higher risk tactic than some may think. If
you have evidence that a foreign national is engaged in intelligence work, there
are benefits to not expelling them. Instead you can track them, build understanding
of their actions and in turn hopefully find the people he/she is speaking to.
This enables a much more effective counterintelligence operation, helping spot
the traitors, as well as the spies. By knowing who a traitor may be, it opens
the door to a whole playbook of interesting tactics, from trying to disrupt their
actions, to feeding false information or trying to in turn compromise the
original diplomat to betray their own country. Over time you gain a deep
understanding of their operations, ‘dead drop’ locations, routines and ways of
working. You essentially tolerate their activity because the value you get from
observing it often could outweigh the cost of the treasonous activity.
By contrast expulsion is a final act that will burn, in one
go, every asset that the expelled diplomat had. It will disrupt networks and
ways of working, causing too a significant internal investigation in the home
country to ask ‘how did the British find out about this case, is my
intelligence still valid’, and in turn causing much internal disruption. Anyone
who has engaged with the diplomat will potentially no longer be usable in an
intelligence role in future postings, and the individuals career in any
overseas post is essentially over – no country will keenly welcome an expelled
intelligence officer as a future diplomat. This means the Russians will have
lost the ability to send an experienced intelligence officer abroad in future
formally. If they do have to travel to NATO or other 3rd party
nations, they can expect to be watched closely by the host country, making carrying
out effective intelligence work very difficult indeed.
But expulsion also means losing the ability to track the
known spies and their movements, and also means ‘starting over’ and working out
whether there are still intelligence officers in the Embassy that are active.
This makes for a finely balanced decision – do you accept a known risk, or do you
make a statement when activity either goes too far, or you want to send a wider
signal to Russia? In 2018 the decision to expel large numbers of Russian ‘diplomats’
from the UK was seen both as sending a response to the Skripal poisoning and
also to cause long term disruption to Russian intelligence operations in the
UK.
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Russian Embassy London |
In this case the expulsion of itself is fairly routine,
although given the much reduced size of the Russian presence in the UK since the
Skripal poisonings, will only probably have a fairly limited impact on Russian
operations. That said, it’s a measure of how degraded Russian abilities are now
that they have had to use their Defence Attaché for this work, an individual
who will be prominent and well known, and traditionally not someone in a position
where you’d want them engaged in intelligence work directly for fear of
compromising their agents. This indicates that Russian intelligence operations
in the UK are probably more challenging than recognised and it remains a
hostile operating environment.
The decision to close the facilities in Highgate is a
genuinely powerful response that will cause fury in Moscow. These sites, located
on high ground to the north of the city and with a plethora of antenna, presumably
to pick up the Russian equivalent of ‘Geordie Shores’ have long been known as a
base of intelligence activity in London going back decades. There are reports
of prior spy cases involving Russian diplomats based at this site. It will have
been used by the Russians to do their best to both conduct human intelligence
operations and also potentially electronic intercept – the height of the
location makes it ideal as a collection facility (in the same vein, the Met
Police and GCHQ ran a SIGINT collection site for many years in Denmark Hill, South
London, whose aim was to collect foreign embassy traffic). By forcing the loss of diplomatic status,
these sites are now worthless, which in turn will deal a very significant blow
to long term Russian intelligence activity in the UK. It will take years, if
not decades, to re-establish a meaningful capability in the remaining embassy
site.
This is very much the ‘ace card’ in the FCDO’s hand when it
comes to putting pressure on Russia. Highgate was the jewel in the crown of
their intelligence efforts in London and its loss will be keenly felt by Moscow.
But it also leaves the UK with a relatively bare cupboard of future escalation
options if Russian behaviour continues to breach accepted diplomatic norms. It
is telling that even during the Skripal crisis, the UK chose not to close these
sites as a punishment, presumably judging there was value in retaining them so
as to influence behaviour, so one has to ask why it is doing this now? It could
be that the UK has accepted that while Putin remains President, there is no
hope of rapprochement with Russia and that it is better to remove their intelligence
capabilities from the UK rather than tolerate their presence for much longer.
It also provides a future carrot for a new leader, dangling the prospect of
more diplomatic presence or reopening of sites as a means of shaping future relations.
But in the short term, the FCDO will not have many other sticks to deploy diplomatically
to hurt Russia short of further expulsions, which will only harm our own
presence in Moscow, or outright closure of the Embassy itself.
The Russian response will be telling – the UK has a much
smaller presence in Russia, and the likely outcome will be more limited. There
may be a formal closure of the Defence Section, which to all intents has been
without value in many years given the collapse in Russian/UK relations, or
there could be some similar expulsions. But short of closing a consulate (there
is only one remaining in Yekaterinburg), Russian response options will be
fairly limited. It is perhaps a measure of how poor the links are with the West
that they find themselves left with limited ways to lash out, and are without
doubt worse off than the UK will be in any tit for tat measures.
The impact of this decision will not be fully understood for
some time, but it will almost certainly disrupt Russian intelligence operations
in London, cause significant challenges to future reestablishment of
intelligence work for Russia and due to the shorter visa lengths, it will be
harder for new diplomats to build up long term links that could help cultivate
future agents (the current Defence Attaché has been in the UK for a decade). The result is that London has now become a very ‘hard target’
for Russian intelligence to operate in, both now and for many years to come.
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