For the past three years, the CIA has run an unusually bold outreach programme. It targeted Russians within the country’s government and security services, attempting to turn them into double agents.
Slickly produced recruitment videos portrayed cooperation with the US secret agency as the patriotic choice for officials disaffected with Vladimir Putin’s regime and the war in Ukraine. The videos ended with instructions on how to contact the CIA in a secure manner.
Come January, however, any Russians who answered those calls will be facing a very different geopolitical reality. Donald Trump will be back in the White House and, if he pursues the same policies as last time around, will look to make an ally of Putin’s Russia. His nomination for a key intelligence post is Tulsi Gabbard, who has raised concerns with her remarks on foreign policy in recent years, including speaking of “Russia’s legitimate security concerns” as part of the cause of the war in Ukraine.
The dramatic change in potential policy towards Russia and Ukraine, combined with Trump’s well-established dismissiveness of concerns over the security of classified information, may lead to sleepless nights among any double agents who remain inside Russia.
“We don’t know for sure whether recruitments have been made, and nor should we know, but it’s certainly been the strategy, and moments of crisis like this in the past have been a golden opportunity for recruitment drives for western services,” said Calder Walton, an intelligence historian at Harvard’s Kennedy School and the author of a recent book on the history of the intelligence battle between Moscow and Washington.
Any double agents would probably be aware of the danger inherent in their decision, and the long and gruesome history of predecessors who came to sticky ends. During the late Soviet period, information from moles inside the CIA and FBI led to the KGB uncovering and executing numerous Soviet officials who had agreed to cooperate with the US.
How many Russians may have agreed to work secretly for the west in recent years is highly classified information, kept siloed and compartmentalised even within the agencies themselves to prevent against such leaks. “There are all sorts of safeguards in place about protecting the identity of any assets within the CIA. But the situation we are dealing with now means Trump can ask for any intelligence he wants, it’s his right,” said Walton.
There is reason to believe that at least some recruits have been made. Last year, the CIA’s director, William Burns, said the agency had a “once-in-generation opportunity” to recruit Russians because of widespread disillusionment with the war in Ukraine. Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s MI6, used a rare public appearance in 2022 to say, “Our door is always open”. He compared the full-scale invasion of Ukraine that year to the Soviet Union’s crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968. “That was a moment when a number of Russians decided … that it was their time to strike back against the system they were representing,” said Moore.
Several European security and intelligence sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, have confirmed in interviews over recent months that western agencies have stepped up recruitment attempts. These can involve reacting to proactive contact made by Russians, or cold-pitching using the trusted old technique of “a suitcase full of cash”, said one intelligence source.
Many in the Russian elite are horrified at the invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent pariah status of the country, but it is still a long leap from there to deciding to spill secrets to a foreign power. Another former senior intelligence source said: “Cold approaches are rarely successful but you never know. If there’s a 1% successes rate it’s still worth trying.”
In the current environment, recruitment inside Russia is considered too risky, and most Russian officials are no longer able to travel to Europe. “But there are third countries where it is possible to meet these people,” said the source.
The motivations of potential recruits can include financial need, ideological disaffection or personal grudges, and often involve a combination of all three. Frequently, deals with possible double agents involve the source agreeing to stay in place for a period of time, and later an offer of resettlement under a new identity in the west. “There is also the fact that people might look at the Putin regime and wonder how stable it is; they may think, ‘OK, I can last a bit longer, but I need an exit strategy at some point,’” said one source.
A former head of CIA counterintelligence, James Olson, told CNN last year that the agency could make very attractive offers to disaffected Russians in positions of influence: “We can offer them protection. We can offer them security. We can offer them full anonymity. And we can offer them a package that corresponds to the value of the information they’re providing.”
To help drum up interest, the CIA has set up an official account on the messaging app Telegram, which is popular in Russia, and produced two recruitment videos with expensive production values, featuring fictional Russian officials and set to classical music. In one, the narrator quotes Tolstoy, and says he wants a better future for his son. The video ends with the words: “The people around you may not want to know the truth. We want to.”
These unusually open manoeuvres may be part of a psychological mind game, overstating the success of the CIA’s efforts and meant to spook a Russian elite already paranoid about foreign spies in their midst. The Russian agencies are also likely to be playing mind games of their own: sources said western agencies still had to be on their guard for so-called “dangles”: fake defectors who claim to be disillusioned but are actually loyal operatives who feed western agencies a curated mix of low-level intelligence and misinformation.
“Russians have a long history of spamming you with double agents. You think you want some information about a nuclear submarine, and the next day someone is offering it up. They still use this tactic, absolutely,” said one recently retired western intelligence source.
For any real defectors, however, the upcoming political changes in the US may cause concern. “I think the Trump administration could be potentially extremely damaging for compromising secrets and protecting sources when it comes to Russia,” said Walton. He described the possible appointment of Gabbard as “extraordinarily alarming”. As national director of intelligence, she would oversee 18 agencies, including the FBI and CIA.
Longstanding concerns over ties between Trump and Russia led some allies to share less intelligence with the US during the first Trump presidency, even within the close intelligence sharing alliance of the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, known as Five Eyes.
“I know for a fact that during the first Trump admin one of the Five Eyes partners was careful about sharing intelligence on Russia that might end up in the White House. Closely allied intelligence services had protections in place for this exact question of Russia-related intelligence being compromised. It’s a fair working assumption to say the same thing will be true in the next administration,” said Walton.
