Latest news with #AndreiBezrukov
Wall Street Journal
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
‘The Illegals' Review: Agents in the Deepest Cover
The Russian 'illegals,' or deep-cover spies, landed on our front pages in 2010, when the FBI unleashed a made-for-television roundup of 10 sleeper agents in the U.S. One was Anna Chapman, a real-estate agent who plied her trade in the upper reaches of Manhattan's cafe society. Two others were the Cambridge, Mass., couple 'Don Heathfield' and 'Ann Foley'—real names Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova—who had journeyed far since their student days at Tomsk State University in remote Siberia. Mr. Bezrukov and Ms. Vavilova resembled the fictional couple they inspired in the hit FX television series 'The Americans.' Their children attended local schools, apparently unaware of their parents' secret allegiance to the motherland. 'Don,' supposedly Canadian, had a degree from Harvard's Kennedy School. The couple spoke only English at home and never ate Russian food. The Russian spy agencies always paid meticulous attention to detail: Before one veteran agent was dispatched to Israel, he was sent to a clinic in northern Moscow to be circumcised. In 'The Illegals,' Shaun Walker, an international correspondent for the Guardian, relates these real-life spy stories with breathtaking aplomb. Luckily for him, the Russian spies aren't lurking under the radar any more. Several of the illegals were available for interviews, including Ms. Vavilova, who co-wrote a spy novel based on her exploits, 'A Woman Who Can Keep Secrets,' after she was traded back to Russia. Mr. Walker's story has a perfect frame, as the illegals program had a beginning, a middle and an apparent end. After the Bolsheviks took power in 1917, the militantly anticapitalist Soviet Union was a global pariah. When the U.S.S.R. realized it could not plant spies in conventional billets such as embassies and trade missions, it became more creative.
Irish Times
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
The Illegals by Shaun Walker: The Russian agent who couldn't get Irish people to shut up, and other spy stories
The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West Author : Shaun Walker ISBN-13 : 978-1788167772 Publisher : Profile Books Guideline Price : £22 Spare a thought for Tim and Alex Foley. It was Tim's 20th birthday when, on June 27th, 2010, the FBI pushed their way into the family home in Cambridge, Massachusetts and snapped the cuffs on their parents, Don and Ann. Turns out their parents, who had never even hinted it to their sons, were actually Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova, KGB 'illegal' agents. The brothers found this hard to believe but the truth sunk in once their Canadian citizenship was stripped and they found themselves in Moscow , 'expected to start a new life in a country they had never previously set foot in'. If this sounds like the plot of streaming spy caper The Americans, then Shaun Walker's history of 'illegals' – as opposed to 'legal' intelligence officers stationed in embassies – that stretches all the way back to Lenin and Trotsky hiding in London from the Tsar, proves fact a lot more clandestine than fiction. Once the Bolsheviks were in power, 'Moscow's illegals roamed Europe at will' long before the United States even had a dedicated foreign intelligence service. The adventures of Dmitri Bystrolyotov deserve a book on their own. He seduced secretaries in Nazi Germany, lived with Tuareg tribes, and 'at other times he took on the guise of a Yugoslav butcher, a jaundiced English lord, or a Norwegian herring salesman'. READ MORE Walker's thrilling book also serves as a potted history of communist Russia, taking in everything from the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico (by an illegal), Stalin ignoring warnings about Hitler's invasion, a near miss for Yugoslav leader Tito and the rise of Putin. Lest we think that Ireland was spared, there's also the case of Yuri Linov who was sent to Dublin to 'scout for interesting contacts, particularly Americans' in the mid-1960s. [ Deep-cover Soviet spy in Ireland posed as travelling salesman and chess buff Opens in new window ] He paid his way by going door-to-door selling bath mats and television magnifying devices. 'Usually, spies have to find ways to coax important information from reluctant targets, but in Ireland Yuri had the opposite problem.' Apparently, he couldn't get people to shut up, although it's unclear if the gossip was of much use to the Kremlin. As Walker points out, we had still not established diplomatic relations with the USSR at that point so this 'Austrian bath mat salesman' was in effect 'Moscow's top representative on Irish territory, even if nobody in Ireland knew it'.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Russia and China are threatening SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation, new report finds
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. SpaceX's Starlink satellite constellation is facing threats from Russia and China because it was tapped for military use in Ukraine following Russia's invasion of the nation in 2022, according to a new report evaluating the counterspace capabilities of a dozen countries over the past year. The report, published on Thursday (April 3) by the nonpartisan policy think tank Secure World Foundation (SWF), highlights how humanity's growing reliance on space — especially for national security — has led an increasing number of countries to develop their own counterspace capabilities. The 316-page document assesses the counterspace capabilities of 12 countries including the U.S., Russia, China, India, Australia as well as North Korea and South Korea, based on publicly available information spanning February 2024 through February of this year. "We feel strongly that a more open and public debate on these issues is urgently needed," the report's foreword states. "Our global society and economy are increasingly dependent on space capabilities, and a future conflict in space could have massive, long-term negative repercussions that are felt here on Earth, as everyone on this planet is a user of space data in some form." SpaceX's Starlink uses a massive network of satellites in low Earth orbit to provide high-speed broadband internet. Ukrainian residents began using Starlink in 2022 to maintain internet connectivity after Ukraine's own internet services were disrupted following Russia's invasion. The service also enabled secure communications for the Ukrainian military and government. Starting in May 2024, however, the Ukrainian military began experiencing outages in Starlink connections, with military officials attributing the disruptions to Russia "testing different mechanisms" for its electronic warfare systems seemingly employing new and more advanced technology. The SWF report cites leaked U.S. military documents that suggest a Russian system called Tobol — that was originally designed to protect Russian satellites from jamming — was used to disrupt Starlink commercial satellite signals over Ukrainian territory. Those leaked documents "suggest that Russia has used at least three Tobol installations to try and disrupt Starlink commercial satellite signals over Eastern Ukraine," the report notes. Russia appears to also be developing a newer, more sophisticated system called Kalinka, which is intended to detect and disrupt signals to and from Starlink satellites in order to interfere with Ukrainian drones and military communications, according to the SWF report. Andrei Bezrukov, the director of the Russian Center for Unmanned Systems and Technologies, which is developing the Kalinka system, told state media that the so-called "Starlink killer" could also detect communication terminals connected to Starshield, the military version of Starlink that's designed with enhanced security features. Additional reports revealed that Russia had jammed GPS signals in four European countries: France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Luxembourg. There have also been reports that Russia interrupted children's TV channels in these countries to broadcast images of the war in Ukraine. The International Telecommunication Union's Radio Regulations Board has said the interference likely originated from stations in Moscow, Kaliningrad and Pavlovka. "As of February 2025, the Starlink service appears to have been remarkably resistant to further cyber attacks," the report notes. According to the SWF report, China is investing in similar capabilities for potential future armed conflicts with the U.S. In July of last year, researchers from the People's Liberation Army Navy proposed laser-equipped submarines with retractable masts that could surface to target Starlink satellites or other space-based surveillance systems, although the researchers acknowledged that the submarines' limited detection capabilities would require external forces to provide satellite position guidance for accurate targeting. Related Stories: — US Space Force picks Rocket Lab and Stoke Space to compete for national security launches — Secretive Russian military satellites release mystery object into orbit — Chinese astronauts install debris shields on Tiangong space station during 8.5-hour spacewalk (video) Meanwhile, the U.S. Space Force is testing new satellite jammers called the Remote Modular Terminals, intended to operate remotely and provide counterspace electronic warfare capability, the report notes. "Everyone is jamming," Victoria Samson, the director of Secure World's Washington office and one of the report's primary authors, told Breaking Defense earlier this week. So far, only non-destructive counterspace capabilities are being actively used against satellites in current military operations, the report notes.
