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.

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 3^rd 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.

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.