Russia revives Smersh, Stalin’s anti-spy unit made famous by James Bond The feared counterintelligence organisation has made a comeback, according to a confessional video (unpaywalled archive link in comments)

6 comments

1. Archive link:

   >It is a word that evokes the ruthlessness and paranoia of a different age: Smersh, a portmanteau of the Russian “smert shpionam”, meaning “death to spies”, was the name of a counterintelligence directorate created by Joseph Stalin.

   >Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings targeting the Red Army during the Second World War, the brutal directorate was officially disbanded in 1946.

   >Today, however, Smersh is making a return to a Russia paranoid about scheming western spies and looking to protect itself from them.

   >In a confessional video published in Russia yesterday, a young Russian man in a tracksuit said he was prepared to accept any punishment for “wrongly and thoughtlessly” filming an air-defence system in the region of Belgorod, bordering Ukraine.

   >Standing on either side of the young man are two men in helmets, their backs turned to show the word “Smersh” printed on their flak jackets. The two men could be operatives from another counterintelligence unit using the term informally, or vigilantes. But Russian politicians and bloggers say an official Smersh-style group is already active in Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine and could already have been expanded to Russia proper.

   >In the early novels of Ian Fleming, which introduced the group to the West, agents of Smersh are cold-blooded and steadfast foes of James Bond — most famously the assassin Rosa Klebb with her flick-knife shoe.

   >Fleming had served as a naval intelligence officer and drew on his experiences to create a version of Smersh, which saw its operatives duelling spies like Bond abroad. In reality, the wartime group was focused with brutal efficiency on rooting out traitors and foreign agents within Soviet ranks. Last month, Andrei Gurulev, a member of the defence committee in Russia’s state duma, the lower house of parliament, said a decision had been made at a meeting to create a directorate analogous to Smersh.

   >“We talked about Smersh and today created a directorate that will work in the same way in the new territories [Ukrainian regions annexed by Moscow],” said Gurulev, an MP with the pro-Putin United Russia party, adding that threats to the military’s rear in heartland Russia also needed to be addressed.
   Railways could be attacked by saboteurs, while warships and atomic submarines in the country’s Far east were vulnerable, argued Gurulev, a former lieutenant general.

   >He referred to an explosion in late November in a tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, or BAM, the Russian railroad which the links trans-Siberian line to the Pacific Ocean, 2,600 miles further east. Media in Kyiv reported sources in Ukrainian military intelligence saying it was responsible.

   >“A fight against saboteurs and spies is necessary across the whole country: after all, war has come back to bite us across the entire territory of the Russian Federation,” Gurulev said. Captured agents should toil for life in remote penal colonies, he added.

   >The man confessing in the video named himself as Denis Ivanovich Baban, 22, and said he had filmed the air-defence system on January 2.

   >“I want to apologise to the whole Russian Federation and most importantly to the residents of Belgorod region,” he adds. “I admit my guilt fully and am prepared to be punished for it in full.”
   Posting the video, the Russian war blogger Vladimir Romanov wrote on Telegram: “I didn’t want to be the first to write about it, but since the lads have appeared on camera — yes, Smersh has been systematically reborn.”

   >Romanov said the agents had located Baban within two hours of his transgression. “He won’t do it again,” the blogger added.

   >Whether or how Baban was punished has not been reported.

   https://archive.ph/rBhv8

2. Now they only need to revive GULAGs and close borders to finish transformation into Soviet Union 2.0.

3. Next thing we’ll know, Putin grows a mustache.

4. Troglodyte Chiefdom has always been the russian favourite type of government. And the world thought they might have felt sorry for the millions of dead in gulags or Ukrainian Famine. Kidding.

5. Putin hasn’t got the imagination to create anything new- he continually rehashes old Soviet methods and at that they are the very worst things that were done in recent history. He is a plague to humanity and to his own people!

6. Karla’s back my dudes