Today Cyprus is the preserve of the Russian secret services. They feel much more at ease here than in other EU countries. And that is why they behave much more actively. There are several reasons for this, but the main one is that after Russia’s war with Ukraine started, nobody touched them.
Other EU countries expelled hundreds of Russian intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover, restricted the activities of Russian propaganda media, imposed visa restrictions and sanctions. Cyprus has not been affected.
Hundreds of employees of the Russian embassy and Russian House (they say there are about 300 of them) continue their activities unhindered. These activities are primarily intelligence and propaganda.
Here we should take into account that in Soviet times from 60% to 80% of the staff of Soviet missions were officers of special services. In present times, they are likely to be even more. In addition, official diplomatic activity between Russia and EU countries practically stopped after Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Therefore, employees of Russian missions were left to engage only in covert activities — intelligence, propaganda, recruitment of new agents and attempts to destabilize the political situation in the EU countries.
In this sense, Cyprus has gained special significance for Moscow for several reasons. First, the personnel of the Soviet embassy remained intact. Secondly, because the Russian Center for Science and Culture (the so-called «Russian House») continues its activities unhindered. It is a branch of the embassy open to the public, doing nothing but propaganda and recruiting agents of Russian influence. But all this under the guise of «cultural activities». And thirdly, due to the specifics of the Russian community in Cyprus.
In the early 90s, when the USSR collapsed, there were no Russian emigrants in Cyprus at all. Only embassy officials. Now the number of post-Soviet Russian immigrants in Cyprus reaches 120 thousand people, of whom about half have Cypriot citizenship. This is about 10% of the total population of the island.
At the same time among Russians in Cyprus there are very few former political or economic refugees. But the share of rich and very rich Russian migrants in the total mass is probably higher than in any other country in the world.
It was mainly wealthy Russians — businessmen and officials loyal to Putin’s regime — who moved to Cyprus with its offshore zones and the possibility of obtaining citizenship by buying real estate. Naturally, the concentration of representatives of the security services in Cyprus was initially extremely high. First of all, because, at one time, the «golden passport» program allowed hundreds of Putin’s officials, businessmen and agents of Russian security services to penetrate into Europe. In addition, Cyprus was a convenient place to store capital for Putin’s oligarchs. And this meant a very high level of interaction with the local political and financial elite. This, in turn, opened wide opportunities for influencing the general policy of the EU countries. This picture is confirmed by the recent investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the leak of documents from several Cypriot financial companies.
Cyprus is not part of the Schengen zone, so direct contacts between Russia and Cyprus have not suffered too much over the past two years. Rather, on the contrary, entire IT companies from Russia with tens of thousands of employees and their families have moved to Cyprus entirely. There is no reason to believe that these people — usually young qualified engineers — are massively sympathetic to Putin’s regime, but they are, unlike ordinary single emigrants, dependent on their employers. Characteristically, unlike Russian emigrants who fled Putin’s regime to other countries, in Cyprus the milieu of so-called «relocants» is politically neutral. It shows almost no trace of opposition activity. In any case, this environment is extremely favorable for the activities of Putin’s agents.
Here we should say a few words about the structure and organization of the Russian security services.
In the USSR, since the 1950s, there were two special services engaged in intelligence activities abroad — the KGB and the GRU. In the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, they became three. The State Security Committee was divided into several independent agencies. Two of them, the Foreign Intelligence Service (the former First Main Directorate of the KGB) and the FSB continued to work abroad, as did the military intelligence agency, the GRU. Under Putin, a fourth, and probably the largest foreign intelligence service specializing in emigrants — Rossotrudnichestvo — emerged in 2007.
The point is that in the early 1990s, a new and promising factor emerged in the work of Russia’s state security agencies — the mass emigration to the West of citizens of the former Soviet Union.
Work among Russian emigration has been the most important task of the Soviet state security agencies before. The first emigration, the White Guard emigration of the 1920s, was permeated with Soviet agents. At that time in Paris and Berlin there was a real war between anti-Soviet emigrant organizations and the OGPU, which created new organizations from its agents, recruited its agents, kidnapped and killed everyone it considered necessary. The entire first emigration numbered about two million people and actually came to naught by the 50s-60s.
The second emigration was military, consisting of prisoners of war who did not return to the USSR and citizens of the USSR who fled to the west from the Soviet regime. The total number of approximately 400 thousand people. The NKVD also worked with them, but there were not many of its representatives left in Europe, they left for more distant countries, fleeing from the Soviet security services.
The third wave began in 1960 and had a completely different character. Unlike the first two, it was legal. Several categories of Soviet citizens were granted the right to officially leave the USSR, ostensibly to reunite with relatives abroad. The largest and most famous was the so-called «Jewish emigration» to Israel. In reality, emigrants were dispersed all over the world, mostly in Israel and the United States. In total, until 1988, about 300,000 people received exit permits. In addition to the noisy Jewish emigration, there were the much smaller and lesser known German and Armenian emigration.
«German emigration» to the FRG in the 1970s and 1980s amounted to just over 80,000 people and was much more difficult than «Jewish» emigration, with more refusals and arrests of protesters. In 1971-1985 about 50 thousand Armenians also emigrated. Here we should add a very small number of dissidents, defectors and non-returnees expelled from the USSR.
The specificity of the third emigration was that the KGB could regulate and control its composition. According to some data, up to 60% of those who left the country signed in advance that they would cooperate with the KGB.
This does not mean that all of them really became KGB agents, but it was up to the KGB to decide whom to involve in their work and whom not to. And the KGB could send its employees to the West under the guise of emigrants without hindrance and in any quantity.
The operational development of former emigrations was secret. Formally, from the official point of view, all of them consisted of enemies of the Soviet power, even the legal third. Because under the Soviet regime, the mere desire to leave the USSR, expressed aloud, turned a person into its enemy forever. Public and friendly contacts between Soviet representatives and emigrants were out of the question.
Everything changed in the nineties. Millions of former Soviet citizens went to the West, but they were no longer traitors to the motherland, but «compatriots,» that is, friends. This term soon acquired a legal meaning.
At the same time, the role and tasks of the former Soviet and now Russian special services did not change. But new opportunities opened up for emigrants to contact the authorities. There was no longer any need to hide. And the ways of penetration to the West became very diverse. Students sent abroad by the secret services received Western diplomas and could no longer be distinguished from normal people. Embassy staff and officers who worked under diplomatic cover simply quit their jobs, went into business and turned into Western businessmen without changing their main profession.
New methods and new organizational forms were required to work in the new vast and friendly Russian-speaking environment abroad. They began to emerge in the 1990s, but relatively timidly. At that time, there was still a slight confusion in the government and agencies about the goals of the special services. Formally, Russia was building a democracy and making friends with the West. But Putin’s rise to power put an end to the confusion. Funding for subversive activities against the West and the number of organizations engaged in them began to grow rapidly.
The goals are the same as in Soviet times:
1. Pro-Russian patriotic propaganda among emigrants and recruitment of agents.
2. Recruitment of the political and business elite of the host countries.
3. Scientific and industrial espionage.
4. Military espionage
5. Diversions and liquidations
However, the methods of work changed dramatically. The novelty of the idea was to create, under the guise of public organizations, a huge legal network of various agents of influence aimed at working with different target groups of emigrants.
The first such international supposedly public organizations of «compatriots» began to appear after Putin came to power.
And in 1999, the word «compatriot» acquired a legal meaning and began to mean both former citizens of the USSR and natives of Russia, and in general, anyone who wants to associate himself with Russia. The wording is legally absurd, but new structures were created and financed under this wording, supposedly aimed at protecting the rights of compatriots and consolidating them.
In Putin’s time, many fictitious associations of «compatriots» were created along professional lines — associations of journalists, scientists, actors, lawyers, Russian language teachers. All of them are run by Moscow curators and financed from Moscow.Here are the main such organizations, in order of creation:
1999 — World Association of the Russian Press (WARP)
2001 — World Congress of Russian Compatriots in Moscow.
2002 — International Council of Russian Compatriots (ICRC)
2002 — World Congress of Russian-speaking Jewry
2006 — World Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots — the most extensive network of agents of influence, which has its branches in all countries where there are Russian embassies and at least minimal groups of emigrants.
2008 — International Association of Russian-speaking Scientists (RASA)
2011 — Immortal Regiment
2015 — International Association of Russian Speaking Advocates (IARA, created by MSRS)
2015 — Volunteers of Victory
2017 — Association of Russian Theater Workers Abroad
2017 — International Union of Choreographers,
2017 — «Association of Journalists and Mass Media Abroad»
2017 — Media Alliance of Russian Communities (MARS)
2021 International Association of Russian Schools
There are also various friendship societies, societies of alumni of Soviet and Russian universities, literary and sports organizations. There are military organizations, such as the International Union of Paratroopers. There are church and near-church organizations connected simultaneously with the Russian Orthodox Church and special services.
In 2008, a new state service called «Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation» was created to manage all emigrant organizations. In short — Rossotrudnichestvo. The head is Yevgeny Alexandrovich Primakov, grandson of former Prime Minister and first director of the SVR Yevgeny Maximovich Primakov. Rossotrudnichestvo reports to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. All «Russian Houses» in different countries have turned into official representative offices of Rossotrudnichestvo.
In 2007 the fund «Russian World» was created specifically to finance organizations of «compatriots». The chairman of the board of the fund is Vyacheslav Nikonov, grandson of Stalin’s People’s Commissar Molotov. Another similar fund — the Fund for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad (abbreviated as Pravfond) was created in 2012.
All these international associations and unions are called public organizations, but they are not. They are created and financed by Moscow.
All of them are aimed at consolidating different professional, social and ethnic groups of emigrants. All of them have branches in different countries, forming a dense and intertwined network of agents of influence, covering all countries with Russian emigrant communities.
The main structure through which all the others are largely managed is the World Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots and its country coordination councils.
In recent years, the role of these structures has increased dramatically, as the activities of legal residences of the SVR, FSB and GRU in the European Union, the United States and Canada have been virtually paralyzed by the expulsion of intelligence officers working under diplomatic cover. True, Cyprus was not affected.
After the war with Ukraine began, Rossotrudnichestvo and the Russian World and Pravfond foundations fell under EU sanctions and lost the ability to legally operate in most European countries. Nevertheless, «Russian Houses» continue to operate, and the financing of the activities of Russian agents of influence has not stopped, and even, judging by a number of signs, has increased.