Coded nonsense: How Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service fabricates “secret dispatches” from its “agents” abroad

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To Comrade Sergeyev, from Frank

The latest issue of Razvedchik — which translates to “intelligence officer” or “spy” — includes coded messages from SVR agents “Diaz,” “John,” “Stone,” “Marat,” and “Frank.” “Diaz,” stationed in Syria’s capital Damascus, warns Moscow that:

“According to incoming reports, the MI6 and the CIA, following the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, have instructed ISIS field commanders under their control to carry out a series of attacks on Russian military bases. Drones were provided to the terrorists for this dirty job.”

From Brussels, “John” alerts Moscow to a NATO campaign aimed at undermining Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky:

“They plan to release information that Zelensky and his team personally embezzled $1.5 billion intended for ammunition purchases.”

In Kyiv, “Marat” warns of possible Ukrainian terror attacks in Europe, while “Frank” in Tbilisi reports on European subversion efforts ramping up in Georgia. None of the so-called agents offer any verifiable evidence for their claims, and phrases like “according to incoming data” and “based on available information” are as specific as they get.

The “SVR Is Authorized to Declare” column first appeared in Razvedchik a year and a half ago. Styled after Soviet-era MGB cables from the 1940s, the so-called “secret” dispatches come adorned with all the typical markings: “SVR of Russia,” “Secret,” “Copy No. 1,” “Copying Prohibited,” along with dates, operative codenames, a “Declassified” stamp, and references to one “Comrade Sergeyev” — the supposed recipient. All of this is clearly intended to convince readers of the authenticity of the intelligence being presented.

Aside from the agents mentioned above, other regular “contributors” include “Alex,” “Nora,” “Jacques,” “Felix,” “Alain,” and “Ben.” Their dispatches often echo Russian state propaganda — with impressive speed. In February 2024, shortly after Vladimir Putin told former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson that NATO was exaggerating the “Russian threat,” “John” promptly cabled the following to SVR headquarters:

“Incoming intel indicates that the U.S. State Department is actively preparing a large-scale propaganda campaign aimed at heightening fear in Europe over the ‘Russian military threat.’ To that end, a series of text posts and videos tailored to different audiences is reportedly planned for distribution across popular European social media platforms and messaging apps, designed to highlight the ‘seriousness of Moscow’s territorial ambitions.’”

Following the May 2024 assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in the town of Handlová, Slovak police arrested 71-year-old writer Juraj Cintula, who cited political disagreements with the government as his motive for firing five shots at Fico, two of which hit their target. However, according to “Nora,” the SVR’s purported resident in Slovakia, nefarious Western powers were behind the attack:

“The assassination attempt on Slovak Prime Minister R. Fico, intended to intimidate ‘dissenters’ in Europe and beyond, shows that Washington and Brussels are prepared to resort to open political terror against their opponents.”

“Felix” in Paris appears to be just as up on the “news” of the day. He writes:

“There is growing concern within the French military over the rising number of French nationals killed in the Ukrainian theater of operations. It is noted that dozens of French citizens were killed during a Russian strike on a temporary foreign deployment site near Kharkiv on Jan. 17 of this year.”

In reality, the strike hit a private clinic, killing one and injuring 17.

No fewer than five of the SVR’s fictional agents — “Stone,” “John,” “Marat,” “Felix,” and “Nora” — are assigned to monitor Zelensky. Razvedchik regularly prints headlines such as “On U.S.-Backed Leadership Changes in Ukraine,” “On Western Plans to Replace Zelensky,” and “On Zelensky’s Waning Support Among U.S. Elites.”

Naturally, the “dispatches” claim that Zelensky has failed to meet the expectations of his handlers in Washington and London — and that, month after month, he is facing imminent removal from his post. Many pro-Kremlin media outlets and pro-war bloggers cite these magazine publications as if they were genuine intelligence obtained by Russia’s foreign spy service.

Unmasking the “resident agents”

Speaking to The Insider, a former SVR officer explained why these telegrams couldn’t possibly be real.

“First of all, if this were a genuine initial report from a resident agent, it should mention no data. Yet here we see a telegram number, the time it was received at HQ, and a reference to a certain Comrade Sergeyev — all of which are strictly forbidden. For that matter, where’s the timestamp showing when the cipher clerk in the ‘Forest’ [SVR headquarters in Moscow’s Yasenevo] received and decrypted it?

Second, our special dispatches are rarely signed with foreign names like ‘John,’ ‘Frank,’ or ‘Stone.’ That only creates confusion. Normally, operational aliases like ‘Ivanov,’ ‘Petrov,’ or ‘Sidorov’ are used. Only within the report itself might you say something like ‘according to a trusted source named John.’

And our residents never use phrases like ‘Anglo-Saxons’ or ‘dirty game.’ Proper reports contain hard facts, numbers, a concise summary of events, forecasts, and assessments. What we see here reads more like a Soviet-era Pravda editorial.

Finally, there’s no return date for the document, no designated space for notes or approvals from the higher-ups — both of which are crucial. I read all these creations in the magazine, and frankly, it feels like every one of these telegrams was written by the same person.”

Another source for The Insider — a former employee in the secretariat of a Russian security agency who is familiar with how classified documents are handled in real life — also cast doubt on the authenticity of the classified cipher telegrams published by Razvedchik:

“I’ve handled thousands of these telegrams. Believe me, I’ve never seen intelligence submitted to the leadership on papers like these. There are strict instructions and classified templates for that. If these telegrams were real, their declassification wouldn’t happen for at least ten to fifteen years — they directly reveal the locations of promising intelligence assets. That means these publications fall under the Law on State Secrets and could lead to criminal prosecution. So this shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

The Insider has obtained authentic classified cipher telegrams, printed on official forms with proper markings. The documents include a special report from the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, to Nikolai Patrushev when he headed the FSB, along with a wanted list issued through FSB channels.

The magazine Razvedchik was launched in 2022 on the initiative of SVR Director Sergey Naryshkin. In his foreword, he wrote:

“In today’s exceptional conditions — when our country is essentially under large-scale hybrid attack and Western centers for information and psychological warfare are flooding each of us daily with lies, often cleverly disguised as truth — it is critically important to have reliable guides that help us avoid drowning in this ocean of disinformation, filter out the noise, and quickly grasp the essence of unfolding events.”

The magazine’s editor-in-chief is retired KGB General Mikhail Pogudin, who spent ten years undercover at the KGB's First Chief Directorate (PGU) station in Ankara and later served as an adviser at the Russian Embassy in Belarus. He now heads the charity “Soglasie” (lit. “Agreement”), which shares an address with the SVR’s press bureau. He also leads the SVR’s Veterans’ Council.

Here’s how a fellow intelligence veteran described Pogudin to The Insider: “While in Turkey, Mikhail Vitalyevich didn’t do much fieldwork — mostly collected party dues at the embassy and ran political briefings. A typical political officer who knew how to please his superiors.”

Until November of last year, Razvedchik was overseen by the SVR’s former press bureau chief Sergey Ivanov, who once spied in the U.S. undercover as a “journalist” for Komsomolskaya Pravda and Tribuna. He was replaced by political intelligence general Sergey Guskov, who last year co-authored a book with his deputy Yevgeny Dolgushin titled Operation “Enormoz” (a play on “enormous”) about Soviet efforts to steal nuclear secrets from the U.S. Though the book isn’t selling well — it is now heavily discounted at major Russian bookstores and online retailers like Ozon — Guskhov and Dolgushin were given an SVR award for it earlier this year.