But, if anything, a much better way of thinking of these agencies is to compare them to the British Special Operations Executive or US Office of Strategic Service of the Second World War. For they are engaged in far more than just collecting information to inform policy, and with a bias towards aggressive risk-taking that is actively encouraged by the Kremlin.

The Russian intelligence system

Russia’s security and intelligence services operate in a rather different political context that the West’s, and this gives them a radically different character. President Vladimir Putin – a former officer of the Soviet Union’s KGB and then director of the FSB – clearly regards the so-called Chekists (after the Cheka, the Bolsheviks’ first political police) as among his closest allies and most useful instruments. In 2015, on the Day of Security Service Personnel, he called them “strong and courageous people, true professionals who are reliably protecting Russia's sovereignty and national integrity and the lives of our citizens.”

As a result, they are at once coddled, competitive and corrupt. They are coddled in that throughout the Putin years they have seen their budgets and powers steadily increase. Furthermore, their very status within the political process has increased. Since around 2014, if not before, the indications are that ambassadors and indeed the foreign minister have much less authority to block operations (or even be informed of them in advance) than before.

This comes at a price, though. Their perks are contingent on their ultimate master and patron, Putin, regarding them as being useful. The GRU, for example, spent years in disfavour because of their perceived failings during the 2008 Georgian War. The agencies have overlapping responsibilities (even the FSB is increasingly involved in foreign operations) and compete fiercely and ruthlessly to outshine the others. This is a carnivorous, cannibalistic system – as the former electronic intelligence service FAPSI discovered when it was devoured, largely by the GRU and FSB.

As a result, they rarely cooperate well but, on the other hand, will take chances and demonstrate aggression and imagination. They also, as will be discussed below, compete to tell the Kremlin what it wants to hear, which is perhaps the most dangerous outcome of all.

At the same time, the relative impunity of the security services, as well as their broad powers, has contributed to an endemic problem of corruption. This even extends to operational affairs, from skimming funds intended for Donbass warlords to using eavesdropping capacities to help a ‘friendly’ company win a contract.

Ready for war…

Whatever individual officers may feel, on an institutional level, the intelligence services share Putin’s belief that Russia faces a genuine threat from the West. This is existential not so much in geographic terms (even though some hardliners share Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev’s view that the United States “would much rather that Russia did not exist at all – as a country”) but politically and culturally.