Russia’s Overseas Spies Keep Getting Caught

Spy rings keep getting busted and a massive hack of U.S. government departments has been exposed, but Russia’s spooks keep blundering on...

Lithuania is the latest country to announce that it has busted a Russian spy ring on its soil. The allegation that two of its citizens were spying for Russia comes a few weeks after the Dutch authorities rolled up another of the Kremlin’s “substantial espionage networks.” It’s been a tumultuous few months for President Putin’s overseas espionage operation, which keeps getting caught in the act.

It is unclear if a string of recent arrests blowing up Russia’s overseas missions is merely a coincidence, or whether there has been some kind of leak from inside Russia’s notorious intel agencies. “There is some penetration,” Andrei Soldatov, one of Russia’s best-informed trackers of the security agencies, told The Daily Beast. “Whether it’s relatively new or old, I don't know, but it looks like a big decision was made to use that penetration to slow down Russian offensive ops.” more