This is my semi annual plug for all of you to watch the fantastic and somehow forgotten FX network TV show, The Americans, A spy drama set in Washington DC in the 1980s about KGB “illegals” posing as travel agents.
It’s way better than any basic cable TV show had any right to be. Plus, all seasons are streaming on Hulu, so you don’t have to worry about whether the story will be completed.
https://www.hulu.com/series/the-americans-6deba130-65fb-4816...
What I don't understand is why the attack on the Czech Republic was not seen as an attack by Russia on NATO.
That's a very good question. The problem is what's next if they acknowledge that.
Say it is acknowledged as an attack on a NATO member, but nothing is done. That immediately turns NATO's worth from whatever its is worth now, to less than the paper it was printed on in 1999 when the Check Republic joined the organization.
That's the achilles heel of NATO, and the Russian government knows it. Same goes for Baltic countries and possibly Poland. Currently what is Americans' and West Europeans' appetite for starting WWIII over an arms warehouse, or a small village in Baltics? I want to believe they would step up, but I am not convinced. Those kind of attacks becomes very attractive for Putin: blow something up here, hack something there, assassinate this or that person, and then watch NATO do anything.
That's why the predictable response it so look away and pretend nobody saw anything.
Since the invasion of Ukraine I think it's pretty clear to everyone involved (and many have been making it publicly and loudly clear) that appeasement doesn't work with Putin. So if any of the Baltics gets invaded for whatever reason, you can bet that a majority of NATO members will join to defend (even traitors in some countries like Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria will definitely will try their best to stop their country from joining).
Since the invasion of Ukraine I think it's pretty clear to everyone involved (and many have been making it publicly and loudly clear) that appeasement doesn't work with Putin.
When was Putin appeased?
The world sat idly when he invaded Georgia, Crimea, Donbass. When Russian agents sabotaged facilities over Central and Eastern Europe, murdered dissidents and civilians.
If Putin was smart he'd perform something like this:
That sounds like BRICS. Non-declared economic warfare is in use now. There was also the 2023 Russia-Africa summit, which I was astonished to learn did not take place within Africa.
I’m not sure what the opposite of appeasement is in this context. A great power state invading/annexing/assisting a “separatist group” (whatever you want to call it) does not lead any direct escalation with another great power/superpower in this day and age. In turn I don’t understand how Putin has been getting appeased any more than other great powers.
Georgia, Crimea, Donbass, all the many assassinations on Western soil, etc.
Sure, but as the commenter above you was saying, it wouldn't be an "invasion." It'll be a series of escalation provocations. Blow something up "by accident", poisonings of escaped dissidents, "little green men" stirring stuff up in the "persecuted" Russian-speaking minority, and then using that as a pretext for more and more strident interventions.
And at each point NATO has to make a decision whether it's "worth it" to escalate into armed conflict over it, and Putin can just keep "bending the stick" until he finds where it's about to snap, and not push any further, while the stick gets a bit weaker and weaker...
I do think the Russians are vulnerable right now in the sense that if they provoked excessively in the fashion they were used to before the invasion of Ukraine, they could open the floodgates to more serious support for Ukraine.
One way to alleviate patch up that achiles heel is a bit shady: proportional indirect responses. (E.g. Wagner forces in north Africa are not officially part of Russian army…)
Yes, exactly! And it should be escalated a bit more so Russians would be dissuaded from doing this again. "Oh look, that Crimean bridge fell, how unfortunate!" or "another munitions warehouse blew up in Siberia: oh that's too bad". Sadly, I don't think current Western leadership [1] is up to it. It requires playing dirty and getting on Putin's level. Sadly, I think that's the only language he understands. Any appeasement is seen by him as weakness to be taken advantage of.
[1] Macron recently showed some surprising boldness, probably noticing Americans dragging their feet with the aid package and Germans being terribly indecisive as well. Not a bad political play.
What for? To start a war between nuclear powers just because of sabotage? Furthermore, we the members of NATO sometimes sabotage other members, like when some pipes of the Nord Stream pipeline were destroyed two years ago. So...
we the members of NATO sometimes sabotage other members, like when some pipes of the Nord Stream pipeline were destroyed two years ago
Damn! You have evidence of that? That must be worth a fortune.
You mean we don't know who managed to blow up the pipeline that some NATO members threatened to blow up several times? Yes, we only have this official investigation from two ""independent"" countries that wouldn't hesitate to point their finger at Russia if they had any evidence, no matter how weak, yet they closed it "without identifying perpetrators". You're right, no clue!
You can argue that if it was Russia, western countries might want to ignore it, because otherwise they'd have to do something. Much easier to respond by supporting Ukraine.
For a NATO ally to do it would be extremely risky -- what if the others hadn't kept quiet? (You can't always predict what your allies will do)
It's worth a lot less in a hypothetical scenario where everyone's decided its in their best interests to forget all about it, which may be similar to the scenario we're currently in.
In politics, the truth isn't usually worth very much, and is second fiddle to the ends.
Suppose ot were true, how would you turn the evidence into profit? Sell it to western media? Let the wrong person know and they'll tip off western intelligence and then your car will drive you into a tree. Sell it to Russia? Maybe they would pay, but would you like life in Russia? Once you're there, maybe they don't pay after all. Or maybe you sell it to Russia, stay in the west, and spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.
The proof, if any exists, is worse than worthless.
Sorry the last sentence is not proofed. You imagine something.
The funny part is: regardless of which side one is on, imagination is necessary, and typically: unavoidable and undetectable.
we the members of NATO sometimes sabotage other members, like when some pipes of the Nord Stream pipeline were destroyed two years ago. So...
Or when NATO members wanted to build Nord Stream despite protests from other NATO members.
Because NATO is not raring for nuclear armadeggon?
If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way?
Rolling over beacuse somebody is a nuclear power only seems to come up when Russia is in the chat. If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war."
What is it about Russia that makes Russia so irresponsible? And if it is, isn't it time to completely eliminate all economic ties with Russia, and pressure every other country in the world to do the same, until Russia decides to be a responsible country with their nuclear weapons.
If responding to this would mean nuclear armageddon, then what is Russia doing by attacking NATO in this way?
Doing low-stakes trial runs of its capability for sabotage in a future conflict.
The reason it can do this against NATO is because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them.
NATO does not do much of the converse, because Russia has very few non-war ways to punish NATO. NATO would really not like Russia's tit-for-tat response, which is why it prefers to fight arms-length proxy wars, instead.
because NATO has non-war means to tit-for-tat punish Russia for this sort of behaviour. Those means are called sanctions, and there could always be more of them.
Except that they don't really work well against Russia, if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depressive Russian cities where property prices are currently rising. Parallel imports and proxy exports do magic, bureaucrats in the financial block of the government handle monetary policy extremely well, China is helpful and half of the world simply does not care or directly benefits from this war.
So all it took to unfuck the Russian economy is for it to be subjected to sanctions and import/export restrictions? Weird, countries rarely tend to prosper under those circumstances.
I thought that the crooks in charge were running it into the ground for the past ~33 years, I didn't realize that this was all it took to get them to start managing the country well.
if you ask anyone in those small and formerly depressive Russian cities where property prices are currently rising.
Not sure which properties you're talking about, most of the Soviet construction in my home town is - quite literally - falling apart, with no motivation or economic capacity, or money to repair, rebuild, or replace any of it.
Sure, you can inflate property values to whatever amount you want, if you start printing money to finance a war, but that doesn't on its own result in economic prosperity. You actually need to make stuff, and Russian industry has lost the ability to do that decades ago.
I thought that the crooks in charge were running it into the ground for the past ~33 years, I didn't realize that this was all it took to get them to start managing the country well.
You are completely misunderstanding modern Russian economy. The “Running into the ground” part ended 20 years ago. Organized crime was contained, necessary reforms were mostly done, entrepreneurial culture emerged, they started developing industrial policy and digitalization. Old Soviet industry and monocities around it were dying, true, but whole new sectors emerged and they are damn good. Banking and telecoms, hospitality, IT and e-commerce to name a few. Even industry is not completely dead, on the contrary: whole new automotive clusters have grown with increasing localization of components etc. One very good indicator of the shape of industry is the current output of military industrial complex: they scaled it incredibly fast and currently outperform the entire EU on a number of positions. This means that not just some factories are working but their entire supply chain is ok. This is the part of Russia that actually prospers and has been growing for a while now.
Sure, you can inflate property values to whatever amount you want, if you start printing money to finance a war, but that doesn't on its own result in economic prosperity
The thing is, they don’t print money. Their head of central bank is one of the most competent professionals in Europe if not the entire world. What is happening now is redistribution: oil money going into the pockets of the poor people, a family member of which has signed the contract and went to war. No wonder the war feels “justified” for them: they have never seen this kind of money before and they spend it. Just for example take the small town Mtsensk. Since the start of the war property prices there increased by 50%. Old Soviet panel building is still a big upgrade for those who were used to go outside to the toilet. This is another part of Russia, forgotten and abandoned for a while, which won a lottery ticket while supplying the war with cannon fodder.
Both parts exist and when counted on average, negate each other. Omitting one of them is oversimplifying.
Rolling over beacuse somebody is a nuclear power only seems to come up when Russia is in the chat. If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war."
What is it about Russia that makes Russia so irresponsible?
Consider the contents of the training sets. China hasn't "been" our "enemy" until relatively recently, it takes a while for "reality" to propagate to all nodes.
Bluntly put, what makes Russia so "irresponsible" is that they know they can get away with it from experience. This will continue for as long as the collective West keeps behaving in ways that make it clear that it would do anything possible to avoid a confrontation.
Note that there's a difference between talk and action. The West likes to talk about holding Russia accountable, and making a show of it with token sanctions. But when even those token sanctions are routinely skirted by Western companies operating through intermediaries in third countries while Western governments look the other way, Russia knows that all this talk doesn't matter and can be ignored.
It also doesn't help that talking about what needs to be done to be able to reliably push back - i.e. more defense spending, more investment into military infrastructure and manufacturing, helping your allies etc - gets politicians voted out of office in so many Western countries these days.
If China or Israel attacks someone, nobody says "we can't respond to it because it would start a nuclear war."
Actually, I (and most of the world) don't want to start a nuclear conflict with China or Israel either.
Because it was seen as the cost of doing business with Russia, i.e. having access to their natural resources.
And then Czechia in 2021 randomly decided it's not worth it? (Russia did not cut access to their resources as a result anyway). Does not make sense.
The breakthrough in the investigation came only post 2018 as a result of Skripal poisonings where the same agents were involved. It took a while to connect the dots.
The EU, Germany in particular, was not interested in making a big deal out of it for fear of getting cut off from the Russian teat. German economy was set up to run on Russian gas and oil and Germany has a lot of influence over Czechia so there was likely some pressure to keep things quiet. But in 2021 there was enough evidence on who did it and what was being planned to take action.
But in 2021 there was enough evidence on who did it and what was being planned to take action.
Seems like you agree the reason it was not published before 2021 was that there wasn't enough evidence collected yet.
Isn't that the most parsimonious explanation? Why do you feel the need to add this superfluous German angle / Russian resources unfounded speculation?
Vanishingly small amount of facts that affect us are proven in court or by scientific experiment.
When living on this world, one must do a lot of “speculation”, to derive most probable explanations based on limited information available. I guess one could call it “personal opinion”, “informed opinion”, or even “expert oponion” depending on the context.
In this specific case, worth remembering, that speed of investigations depend on resources allocated to it; resource allocation is easily impacted by politics.
Here is an unrelated example, but it illustrates an attempt to appease Russia: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-14202371 (there was European Arrest Warrant for ex-kgb guy over old eastern Europe stuff; in 2011 Austria detained him, but then swiftly released him within 24 hours)
Austria? How not surprising at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_and_Russian_intelligen...
Because Germany is the biggest ally of Russia in the EU and has investments in Eastern Europe that benefit from cheap labour available in the region and cheap oil and gas from Russia (well, no more), so it was not interested in upsetting the status quo.
Wars are never waged as responses to attacks or insults, they are waged when the rulers have determined that they will be profitable. Until then, all attacks or atrocities will be ignored.
When it's time for war, the rulers will make up any kind of excuse, order the media to whip up the population to a war frenzy and mothers will cry tears of joy when their sons get sent away to die in agony in some forest or desert with their guts spilled all over the ground.
But if you think the honour of the Czech Republic or NATO needs to be restored, the question is what are you still doing in front of the computer?
Haven’t you inverted it rather flagrantly? In this scenario it is Russia that attached the Czech Republic.
Wars are never waged as responses to attacks or insults, they are waged when the rulers have determined that they will be profitable
It is a meaningless truism that nations don’t start wars they don’t think they can or will win. No need to dress that up as any sort of profound insight.
Winning the war isn't enough if you suffer greatly to win it and get little if anything to actually show for your victory. "Profit" is necessary.
In this case, the cost of ignoring Russia's attacks is far less than the cost of winning a war against Russia. If this relationship flips, then we might get war.
Also, why would you risk a kinetic response, when it's so far proven perfectly safe to donate equipment to Ukraine?
Nations don't start wars, rulers do. The rulers can still profit while the nation loses. That's the standard outcome of war, the nation will suffer greatly and lose immense amounts of human life and destruction, whether winning or losing the war. Even a nation who only wages war overseas looses much more than they gain, because of productivity that has to go to the war effort. It is only ever the rulers that have anything to gain from war. And of course those who enjoy war and battle for itself.
In this scenario it is Russia that attached the Czech Republic.
It is the ruler(s) of Russia that has done that.
Add it to the long list of attacks. The real question is ‘what sort of attack would generate a response from NATO?’
One everyone knew about that could not be played off as an accident or one small unit that got carried away. Read war histories, large conflicts often start out with a succession of small scale feints, probes, and black operations.
One everyone knew about that could not be played off as an accident or one small unit that got carried away.
Poisoning people in Britain was pretty obvious. But there have been so many others.
Any attack during which the country attacked invokes article 5. Czechs didn't, and I'm not surprised.
Similarly Russia launched a cruise missile back in 2023 that flied over half of Poland and crashed in forest near Bydgoszcz. Poland did not invoked article 5, even if it could be justified.
Reason is similar in both cases:
- war is a BIG DEAL, it would likely cause flight of foreign investment and other businesses
- if NATO helps it would be an easy win, but there would still be loses in the region
- it's possible many countries in NATO don't see that as a sufficient justification for the war, which might cause problems in NATO and reduce the security guarantees for when they are REALLY needed (i.e. if Russia invades somebody in region for real)
TL; DR: it's not worth it for the attacked country, even if Russia is long past the point of "deserving it"
For the same reason that shooting down an Iranian passenger airliner or blowing up its centrifuges isn't considered an attack on Iran.
Also because most of us aren't interested in nuclear war over anything less than an existential threat. And the odds of conventional war between nuclear powers escalating into nuclear war is too fucking high. You'll need a better reason than 'someone blew up a weapons stockpile' to risk that.
If you're not going to risk open war over a full invasion of Ukraine, we sure won't risk it over an arms depot.
De-escalation-by-default is a feature, not a bug in a world where the push of a button can kill a billion people (much to the chagrin of people who have never had war waged against them).
The most egregious acts can be downplayed or politely ignored, if the aggrieved party really wishes to avoid war. On the other hand, the smallest provocation can serve as a justification for war, if the aggrieved party wants war.
North Korea regularly shells South Korea, sometimes killing South Korean civilians. It's absolutely a cause for war, and they might indeed be justified, in a sense, with breaking the ceasefire and marching on Pyongyang the next time NK does so. But they will have to live with the war that would cause.
Everyone responding to you here is wrong.
It's not "seen as an attack by Russia on NATO" because per the NATO treaty Russia nuking Washington DC won't be "seen as an attack" either, that is, until the country being attacked officially declares it as such through the mechanisms the treaty outlines.
The Czech republic hasn't invoked that mechanism, therefore it's a non-event as far as NATO's concerned. NATO doesn't have any mechanisms for pro-actively monitoring attacks on member states, outside of those states themselves.
NATO countries have been consistently looking the other way or downplaying Russian aggression because nobody actually wants to have to get into the sty and get dirty wrestling the pig to the ground.
I don't even think it's based on any realistic concerns of nuclear or conventional escalation... incumbents just don't want to be the ones in power when war happens. I think many aggressors have learned to capitalize on this weakness.
In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application.
“ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what?
It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from. You can’t have a German and Argentinian passport and enter Germany with the German passport and leave with the Argentinian one. Nor can you leave Germany with just the Argentinian one. You can go to other Schengen countries, but you can't leave the Schengen region ("since is your entrance stamp?")
Many (most?) countries do not require you to show any passport when exiting the country. (But if you’re traveling by air, then the next country you enter will likely share your passport details with the country you just departed.)
Examples/source? According to this stack overflow question, the US is (fairly) unique in not having immigration exit checks.
https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-...
The UK doesn't have exit checks.
Of the ~50 countries I've been to in the past 10 years, The UK is the only one I remember which I did not need to show any ID when leaving. I thought it was strange because this is just one way countries catch overstays.
But what’s the point of catching an overstay if they’re leaving already? It’s more important to catch them when they try to re-enter (at which point you could have collected data from airlines to estimate whether they previously overstayed).
Exit checks are pretty pointless if there’s no violation that would lead to enforcement other than deportation (since the traveler is already self-deporting).
Deportation is just the end result. Fines, blacklisting, even imprisonment is possible in many countries.
Britain has a fairly unique attitude, it must be left-over from the empire - best summed up as "this is the garden of Eden, and the worst punishment is exile'
When the 15 year old girl joined Isis, and then subsequently re-appeared in a refugee camp with a newborn, there was little desire to arrest her and figure out if she is guilty or a victim. We just took away her British passport and washed our hands of her. I thought the government would at least rescue the baby, but apparently nobody cared and it perished in the inhumane conditions of the refugee camp.
This is somewhat unique - for example Russia could come after you, or arrest you on entry, but they don't have this idea of exile as punishment.
You sure they don't?
As in, 'you have 2 days to GTFO, or we'll land you in prison for a few years to think of your actions'.
Happened many, many times since the start of this horrific war and many times before.
Source: I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to GTFO from Russia and find a job abroad.
Also, Russia is [contemplating](https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/25/russia-reportedl....) stopping issuing passports abroad - to try and catch the 'undesirables' again. Which would leave many people de-facto stateless. This is what Belarus did quite a while ago, by the way.
I believe the idea of not issuing passports is the opposite -> to get people to come back to Russia where they can face consequences?
"Either you stay the F out and become de-facto stateless, or you're going to prison". Simple as that.
I'm actually pretty surprised that Russia didn't do it yet, as Belarus did a while ago.
It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.
The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.
I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).
It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.
The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.
I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).
So you keep them from leaving and imprison them in your country (essentially paying for their upkeep and rendering them useless for your economy). And you do that to solve the problem of illegal immigration.
It’s so stupid it sounds like a policy some right wingers in my country might actually want to make reality.
If someone has overstayed you might want to note that down in case they come for another stay, right?
if you don't get any record of them leaving, from a manned border crossing or an airline reporting to you, then they've overstayed
You can also assume the first record of them entering another country is the date they left your country, since a person cannot be two places at once.
Well, they can immediately charge a fee (personal experience) and also it may be applicable for other matters in-flight.. let's say you're applying for a visa but have overstayed the current one. If they don't check until re-entry, they wouldn't catch this
They get the records from the airlines. They don’t need to pay someone to stamp passports at the border to know who is overstaying.
Sure (and I'm not sure if that's actually how it works), but the border control also physically stops someone from leaving after they've overstayed. If someone has overstayed, they just go to the airport and hop on a plane with no consequences.
Some countries do fine overstayers, but UK is quite happy for people to leave with no penalty, it just doesn’t want them to come back again afterwards.
If someone overstays without a good reason then they are probably not entering the UK again for a long time.
The consequences are almost worse without the exit controls because overstayers will waste money on a flight only to get turned around at the border - assuming they don’t need a visa or ETA.
Maybe it's a requirement for for air travel only? Why do all those countries bother? Surely they don't all have exit visa requirements?
When taking the Chunnel recently there are two passport checks on the way to the train, leaving UK and then 20 ft later entering France.
They regularly check people flying to certain destinations. Catch a flight to Colombia from Miami and you'll find the friendly Border Patrol C̶u̶s̶t̶o̶m̶s̶ agents in the jetway.
Canada
Can you give an example? Sounds strange to me. Even within Schengen area there can be temporary border checks and you usually need to identify yourself when leaving it.
In-shengen border controls are extremely easy to bypass, and if you travel a lot you know exactly where they are (especially since it is quite rare). Baltic countries have no checks at all at the borders, so you can go Sweden to Finland, Finland to Estonia, Estonia all the way down to Poland without any checks at all, easy. I know there's often a check at the France / Spain border, but I also know they only check busses and rarely any cars, so you can just either drive through with a rental car or just walk over (I once got my ID stolen and could not get over with a bus, so I hitchhicked / walked from Nice to Barcelona).
Those in-Schengen checks for buses and so on are largely just "do you have a valid passport?" and I'm not aware of any real checks of visa status, overstay checks, etc.
If you get caught without a passport, you get detained though. If you've forgotten your passport somewhere, someone else can take it to an airport (or a physical border) and the border control at the airport can then confirm your identity.
You only need to show an id, not a passport, right?
Either is fine, yeah.
In-shengen border controls…
I‘m talking about temporary border controls that any country within the area may implement in certain circumstances according to the agreement. They are not the norm, Schengen is supposed to have only an external border.
You can trivially head from Irun to Hendaye.
No one checked my passport going from Germany to Poland or Poland to France this past week by air.
Per the EU’s website, Romania and Bulgaria don’t check when flying between them.
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...
At least in some countries in Schengen area they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia („You don’t seem to have Russian visa, do you have another passport?“)
However, you don’t have to be very smart and sophisticated to simply choose another route and use connection in Istanbul to avoid this check…
they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia
Who is "they"?
If "they" is the airline, then physically show them the Russian passport: they don't record this information, they only need to see it to confirm that they won't have to fly you back (for free?) to your departing location.
If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.
Who is "they"?
Narva is a pedestrian and car crossing. EU has a border with Russia/Belarus.
If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.
FYI in many places (not everywhere, rarely in Europe) border control will look at your boarding pass too.
Using the passport to book the ticket, and using the passport to go through immigration are completely distinct though.
When travelling we can book with whatever passport, but we need to be more careful during immigration.
I think what this means is that she used her Czech passport when leaving a country, and used the Russian passport when entering Russia (Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national).
That's far from "sophisticated tradecaft" though. For instance a large % of Argentinians have double nationality (Myself included) and we do this all the time when travelling to Europe.
That's what any sane dual citizen would do. Use your Schengen country passport within Schengen and your home country passport when entering your home country. Maybe you wouldn't go to the lengths of using two different passports on one flight (you'd show your Russian passport when boarding a flight to Russia) but if you did, it wouldn't be that weird...
“ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what?
It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from.
It's not generally illegal. Some countries have that requirement but those are generally countries that are particularly strict (e.g. you mentioned Germany and Argentina but they're both countries famous for unusually strict nationality laws; Germany generally strips people of their nationality if they acquire a foreign nationality, Argentina on the other side makes it impossible to renounce your citizenship at all).
“ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what?
I feel that there was a huge loss of competence - our security services are far too busy chasing around lone terrorists with low-tech tools and no op-sec.
The military industrial complex is so deep in grift it can only produce enough weapons to fight third world countries with minimal losses
In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application.
Wouldn't the Greek airline (and Greek exit immigration control) check for a valid Russian visa for a Czech passport? They had to put the exit stamp on _something_?
Or did she use the Russian passport, but then wouldn't that get scanned into the system?
The airline only needs to be physically shown a passport which will get the person into the destination: they don’t record it. So you book with the Czech passport, go through border control with the Czech passport, then show the airline staff the Russian passport.
I may be wrong, but every time you do a check-in you are giving your information and they record it, and you have to show the same document at boarding time.
This doesn't mean that it must be the same document that you used to enter or exit the country though, although depending on the destination the airline may require proof that you can enter the destination country, like a visa or a passport, because having a passenger refused entry may be an hassle for them.
You can use a document to exit the departure country, another for the airline (with the caveat above) and another one for the destination, even with different names on them.
You would should both to the airline staff. "This is my ID I used, and this is my ID which allows me entry so you(the airline) won't have to bring me all the way back to my arrival point." Airline staff will not record this second form of ID: it's only to show the staff for a moment.
Okay, but spies, terrorists and tax evaders (or military duty evaders for Iran) with double nationality have been using the double-passport trick for over a century: Is it time that airlines feed their incoming passenger list to the destination authority?
I mean… isn’t that built-in to the system already? I never supposed entering Thailand that I wasn’t already known to the Thai border police, who surely must have checked that I’m not a banned and/or wanted criminal, right? Or is this system supposed to a single safety net of the destination’s border agent recognizing a fake passport just by checking the numbers in a DB? Is that why TPB’s founders escaped to Thailand, is this why Wolkswagen’s pollution manager thought he could cross the USA freely on holidays without spending 8 years in jail, is this why Carlos Ghosn escaped Japan?
Or do countries carefully avoid reaching an agreement on airline IT systems, just because they do need each others’ spies to cross freely?
It's not even a "trick". It's just normal for dual citizens to make things faster.
Leave Canada on Canadian passport. You just get nods and wave throughs. Enter European country on EU passport in the smaller line (or nowadays automated border control stations). Just scan passport, (don't) smile for the photo and off you go. Flying back Canadian passport is on file and the CBSA just asks you some basic questions and waves you through.
As far as I know if you're a citizen of a country, you have to use your passport from that country to enter/leave that country, at least it's that way with USA:
[1] > U.S. nationals, including U.S. dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States.
And the German foreign ministry says it's international practice to do so, but says "should" instead of "must":
[2] > Bei Doppelstaatern (Erwachsene und Kinder) ist zu beachten, dass nach internationaler Übung
- die Einreise nach und die Ausreise aus Deutschland nur mit deutschem Reisepass oder Passersatz, z.B. Personalausweis
- die Einreise in und die Ausreise aus dem anderen Staat (dessen Staatsangehörigkeit die Betreffenden ebenfalls besitzen) nur mit den nationalen Dokumenten des anderen Staates
erfolgen sollte.
Also a requirement for Canadian dual citizens [3]
I guess it'd be interesting if one has a EU passport but is entering the EU through another Schengen country (eg. A dual Canadian - Italian citizen flying from Canada to Germany). Logic says keep it simple and show the EU passport, but is there a EU clause somewhere that requires that?
[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...
[2] https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/de/reisepaesse-personalauswe...
[3] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...
Like I said, and this is personal experience: yes Canada needs your Canadian passport on file so they (and thus the airline) will let you board/back in.
I have been to several EU countries and none of them cared for the Canadian passport. Tried showing both at the beginning. They don't care. So we only show the EU one now.
Also funny: showing "the other passport only" because you don't have a current one. Like try using the Canadian one if you don't have a current EU passport (expired, never had one yet etc). Takes longer. Works too. Haven't tried recently so things might have changed.
Leaving an EU country has never required the EU passport. In fact having the Canadian on file is a requirement. Otherwise they call your name at the gate because you neither have a Canadian passport nor an electronic authorization on file and thus they can't let you board. So doesn't work in reverse nowadays.
Seems we're mixing up what the airline cares vs what immigration control cares about.
For all the airline actually cares you should be able to just board a plane as long as you paid for the ticket ... everything else is what they are made to do or do because of (dis) incentives.
At least some of them certainly do record it. I have multiple passports and have had difficulties several times with an airline that has one of my passports listed, that doesn't show the right of entry to the other country and which I was not intending to use for that flight. Moreover, if you are travelling on a codeshare flight, for instance, all airlines involved will record your travel documents, but only the airline operating the flight will be able to make updates to them.
edit: they certainly do not anywhere rely on eyeballing a piece of paper and letting some random staff member say "yup looks legit".
Is there a conflict between (a) wanting to exit a country using the passport you entered it on*, and (b) wanting to enter a flight using the passport you will exit on?
* don't want to be recorded as an overstayer
That's a definite maybe!
Some countries make the airline need to know in advance whether to let you even board. Say the US with the electronic visaless authorization. You gotta give the airline your ESTA. Canada wants to know as well. So you need to have your PR card or Canadian passport on file or the electronic authorization.
But that doesn't stop you from entering Europe on a European passport. You can have your say Canadian passport on file and fly out on that. At the destination you show your European passport (smaller line ups and basically you are just waived through). You never show the Canadian passport in the EU on arrival. You have the Canadian one on file and show that when leaving so they let you board. Back in Canada you use your Canadian passport to enter.
This way you never get any visa stamps and you "fly through passport control" on either end.
So yeah, even if this is maybe used by "sleeper agents" it's also just normal for dual citizens.
To the extent that the airlines care, anyone who cannot enter the country is deported at the airline's expense. So where it matters they do care.
This is not really new. Back when steamship was the most common way of traveling between continents, the ocean lines gave lessons to the third-class passengers on what to say to US immigration officials so that they wouldn't have to pay for their lodging and return if they got denied entry. (At the time first-class passengers were not screened this way, so they didn't bother teaching them.)
That makes a lot of sense! Incentives!
Also a nice fun fact about steamships I did not know. Love learning little tidbits like that!
At the airports I've done this, they are separate checkpoints. e.g departing Australia for the US: 1. check in with the airline using your US passport. If it is the return leg of a flight from the US, you probably put in your Australian passport details when booking so you may need to go through an agent. 2. go through Australian border control checkpoint, and show your Australian passport 3. board the plane showing your US passport if asked for ID.
they don’t record it
naive.
Furthermore, Elena owned a company registered in the Marshall Islands and controlled two bank accounts in Switzerland.
If airlines could be fooled, you'd think at least Swiss banks would do some KYC
The whole reason Swiss has a banking reputation is that it didn't do KYC. At all.
Up until the war on terror and the US no longer accepting that excuse. They do extensive KYC now.
for US citizens
GP's tenses are both correct. It has that reputation today, as a lingering effect of how it didn't pry historically. The industry is hanging on for the time being, probably thanks to network/incumbent effects, inertia, and some limited observance of the old ways, for clients whose countries will allow it.
there is the "are you a US citizen or a green card holder" question on every application form. probably there are two separate workflows depending on the answer.
Swiss banking system changed a lot during the last 15 years.
They had to put the exit stamp on _something_?
Are exit stamps a thing in Schengen area for EU citizens? I usually just pass an automatic gate after scanning the passport. It does not have any European marks. Stamp is historically a permission to leave, which EU citizens do not need: we are free to leave and return back.
They are at least for nonEU ppl. Friend got in big trouble because border agents didn't stamp her passport - she went to the us, got an exit stamp but no entry or exit stamp from us and no entry stamp in eu (lots of ppl got lazy...). A routine visit to immigration office suddenly turned into pretty strict questioning and several hours of waiting until they check her passport.
AIUI the stamps are to record your stay duration in the zone and to determine if you've complied with the stay limit (90 days in 180 days). The limits do not apply to EU citizens, hence no stamps needed
As a European I've never had exit or entry stamps when leaving or entering the Union. The only stamps I ever got are from (some) non-EU countries.
I don't follow how is this concerning. All people with more than one citizenship I know at least via a few handshakes use their passports exactly this way for travel.
Why would a Russian citizen go through the hoops of getting a Russian visa on their Czech passport? Does Czechia not allow dual citizenship to call the second secret?
In fact, they would not be eligible for this visa in the first place. Same thing for the US: "U.S. citizens are not eligible for a U.S. visa. " https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-tra...
We don't necessarily even have a choice. I have two passports, and I have to use both of them when I travel between my two countries of citizenship, which is the only overseas travel I do.
If just one of them goes missing, then I am stranded — no matter which country I'm in or which passport I lost — until I can get it renewed. It is illegal for me to just get a visa on my other passport and travel on that instead.
Wouldn't the Greek airline (and Greek exit immigration control) check for a valid Russian visa for a Czech passport?
There's no exit stamp for EU citizens leaving the EU. Also nobody cares whether you actually have a valid visa for the place you're going. It's not their responsibility. Maybe somewhere in some paperwork they make you say that you do and nominally they're supposed to check it, but I'm not sure anyone actually does.
Airlines always check additional documentation for people with passports that do not get visa-free entry to destination. It's a liability issue - they would have to fly that person back if they are not let in.
Of course airlines do not care about documents allowing you entry to the departure point.
If a passenger is denied entry at the destination, the airline is normally responsible for returning the passenger. This is why they care.
Wow that story is like something straight out of spy-romanticising drama! Crazy that such undercover agents really exist!
Also, I wonder what the pay is like? Or how it even works.. probably best to not leave a obvious money trail between state and spy..
Your pay is whatever job you have as a cover pays you. If you were getting additional pay to that, then it would be a red flag when the various agencies investigate you.
The article directly contradicts you:
Elena also provided a veneer of plausibility for the Šapošnikovs’ lavish lifestyle. Despite Šapošnikov’s modest income from Imex (around $650 per month), the family bought real estate in Czechia and Greece at a value far in excess of what their collective income could account for. As Czech investigators note, “in some cases their official income could not cover even their phone bill for the month.” Furthermore, Elena owned a company registered in the Marshall Islands and controlled two bank accounts in Switzerland. Those offshore accounts, plus unexplained cash infusions to their Czech banks and a series of in-cash payments, appeared to have been the real source of income.
...
In 2009 the Šapošnikovs purchased a sprawling villa on the picturesque Aegean peninsula of Halkidiki, Greece. The price, as recorded in the notarial deed of purchase obtained by The Insider, was 275,292 euros, or $300,000 at the time. Elena would later tell investigators that she had funded the investment “with money from my parents” – a tall order for the septuagenarian couple living in Kyiv on pensions of under $300 per month.
Sure, when you get caught and are being interrogated for crimes against the state, you go right ahead and provide your new friends access to those accounts. <facepalm>
Edit: Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said. Your quote proves my statement. They had other sources of income than their cover provided, and the investigators used that to zero in them. <anotherFacepalm>
Should probably close those tags properly
Now everything from here on out is facepalm, argh
They were just blending in with all the other regular corruption in East Europe
If your pay is less than your cover, do you have to give it back?
How does health insurance work for spy stuff? If the GRU agent gets exposed to novachuck, do they get to see a Russian specialist or do they just have access to the providers in their cover plan?
you get paid at your cover job. it's your 9-5. you work in IT, or as a baker, or insurance salesman or whatever. the money you get pays for your flat, and your dinner, etc.
you also have a bank account in your home country, and that gets a salary, too.
your insurance is through your cover job, or the country's healthcare system (if socialized). which also means you have crappy insurance salesman coverage :/ twenty years later when you return to the home country to retire you can sup on your pension and any retirement healthcare coverage, but until then it's on you.
How does health insurance work for spy stuff?
Russia, as most of Europe, has free public health care. You don't have to pay for it.
Also, I think you have some confusion.
1) you are an officer in your army/services. You get your salary on your Russian bank account
2) you have a cover job that pays you. You use that money for your cover life.
Nothing you wrote makes any sense to me.
If your pay is less than your cover, do you have to give it back?
How can your pay be less than your cover? Your cover job is paying you. Your host agency is not.
How does health insurance work for spy stuff?
At this point, I'm curious if this is an attempt at humor?
They are getting full officer salaries and rank promotions and so on even while they are on deployment. Obviously they can’t access money/benefits while on deployment, but they get them when they get back, either by being recalled or traded in case of capture.
Spies often work for free, based on their ideologies. Agents, on the other hand, usually get paid whatever their normal pay is (aka, rank), plus danger pay and per-diem, where applicable.
Spies often work for free
Do you have a reputable source for that?
I think the distinction they're drawing is that "spies" are often just people who hand over information to foreign states because that's where their sympathies lie, whereas "agents" are employees of an intelligence agency.
That said, I don't think I've actually seen this distinction made before, and I'd love to hear citations for all the assertions that OP so confidently makes.
Yeah, this is more inline of what I meant.
Sources:
- Spy museum: Berlin
- Human Intelligence School for the US Amy (in ~07-08)
I think this role is better captured by the title informant: someone who passes information. They are not undercover, but are doing something secretly
Surprisingly, I read a book that had information about the pay for spies, albeit in the Mossad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By_Way_of_Deception
Interesting book about how the Israelis infiltrated Iraq's nuclear weapons program, and the rivalries between the Mossad and other internal organizations in the 80s.
Not these spies apparently. They had meager official income, yet managed to live quite luxuriously.
According to the article, they were arms dealers.
I recommend "The Octopus Murders" on Netflix. The "spy world" is active in all kinds of activities. Many unsavory. All in the name of "the National Interest". Also the story of Gary Webb is quite interesting too.
Agreed. See also Epstein. Very spook-connected dude.
There's a theory circulating that Epstein's network was essentially CIA's honeypot for wealthy and powerful people. I mean, that would be an insanely high value asset if true. And knowing this organization's track record I would not be surprised if this were true.
Nah not CIA. Mossad. Given the number of US businessmen or presidents hanging out at the island it almost certainly not the Americans.
Epstein's homegirl, Ghislaine, had some pretty strong ties to them through her father. She was probably his handler and/or gopher.
Her dad, Robert Maxwell, born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch, had some pretty strong ties to Israeli intelligence. Also worth noting he had strong ties to everyone else, including the KGB and UK intelligence, too. But at his funeral Israeli heads of state mentioned "he did more for Israel than could ever be told", and that was thought to be related to Israel acquiring what is believed to be a nuclear weapons program.
He famously sued the hell out of anyone in the UK who alluded to those relationships -- libel and slander laws are different in ole Blighty -- and it took an MP going on the record in the House of Commons, which is always recorded and is always public record, to expose his questionable ties.
He also famously died of highly suspicious circumstances on his boat out in the middle of nowhere.
That said, look into the history of Donald Barr, the father of Bob Barr, and a good friend/mentor of Epstein's. Raised Jewish but converted to Catholicism, served in the OSS, and had a lot of interesting ties to interesting people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Barr
And Jan Marsalek, of fake German payment startup Wirecard.
The Octopus Murders was absolutely fantastic.
The authors are serial fabulists / NATO intelligence launderers, so it's totally possible that pieces of this narrative are outright fiction, woven in with verifiable facts.
EVERY powerful country has them. Some are just good enough to not get caught.
Most nations have programs like that.
Source: My father[0] was one, for the CIA. Don't think he ever directed "kinetic" stuff, but I guess I'll never know.
I didn't know the GRU had an illegals program. I thought it was all SVR. Anyone know if that's a recent development?
All major intelligence agencies have them. Why GRU would be any different?
GRU is nominally military intelligence and SVR inherited the KGB illegals program. These programs are really hard and have a ton of overhead supporting a relatively small number of actual officers. Having duplicate capabilities for it is a waste. Especially in this case where they're used for active crimes/violence. The GRU has never been shy about just going and murdering people on a tourist visa[0], why bother with all the extra overhead?
Not all (or even most) intelligence agencies run illegals programs since they're crazy difficult, fragile, expensive, and arguably a waste of effort/resources.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/05/planes-train...
having duplicate capabilities for it is a waste.
This is a feature, not a bug. This is how a system of checks and balances works in authoritarian countries - the entire security apparatus is duplicated several times over lest one agency becomes too powerful or indispensable. KGB/Ministry of the Interior/Military kept each other in check for much of the later part of the Soviet Union's existence.
Now that you make me think about it, that doesn't even seem a feature of authoritarian countries.
I can easily think plenty of countries around the world where security and intelligence duties are often duplicated and overlap.
That reminds me of this exchange, where two men are bluffing their way through a (literal) circle of hell:
“They think—what do they think? That we’re important officials?”
“No. Of course not. They know we are only pretending that.”
“Then what—”
“But they cannot be sure. We might be important officials. But most of them think we are secret police.”
“But how do you know there are secret police?”
Benito looked very sad. “Allen, there have to be. You cannot run a bureaucratic state without them. Come.”
-- Inferno, by Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven
This. I would only add that even the FSB (which is theoretically the equivalent of the FBI, and should operate domestically) has extensive foreign operations. It was most likely the FSB that was primarily blamed for the major fuckup that was the raid on Kyiv in 2022. Sergey Beseda, the leader of the "foreign branch", was imprisoned for some time after that happened.
Russia also has had at least three armed forces up until recently, the normal one, the Rosgvardia, and the PMC complex including Wagner. All of them have had rather serious equipment, for example Wagner had tanks, artillery, they even had their own air defence like Pantsir and their own aviation.
Running an oppressive, murderous regime sometimes requires crazy solutions.
While it is probably a waste of resources, dictatorships are famous for having wasteful duplicated efforts: dictators need their people to constantly be competing with each other, and to split favor so that no one ever becomes strong enough to pose a threat to the Big Man himself. That is the whole reason for the GRU-KGB split in the first place!
Suvorov wrote about the Soviet practice of making GRU and KGB compete for the same goals to ensure they get the best intelligence.
How very capitalist of them.
Agencies need all types of spies, some laying low for years in case their networks get rolled up.
GRU has always had its own illegals program, at least from the 1930s.
They were not concerned with the same tasks as KGB/SVR, targeting military technology and the militaries themselves rather than political/security espionage , so they did away with much smaller networks and humbler resources.
Victor Suvorov wrote about GRU illegals 40 years ago in Aquarium. For all the shade thrown at his writing since, it sure has aged well. Here we are with bombings, poisonings, corruption and GRU agents creeping around in Europe today.
He wrote that the traditional method to deal with traitors in the GRU is the headquarters furnace: wire the "guilty" to a gurney and feed them in alive.
His writing about Soviet military doctrine is visible today in Ukraine as well. A giant horde of "mechanized infantry," badly led. They're still using some of the same armor.
Oh yeah the reports about Russian army from beginning of war in Ukraine read like someone copying his book Inside the Soviet Army. Which in turn reads like stories you heard about the Soviets in WW2.
It did. Suvorov has said some cringy and contradictory things, but it seems to me that if you simply take what he has written at face value you'll be closer to right than wrong nearly every time.
Suvorov joked that on a bad day the doctor would come and put iodine on your forehead, so you wouldn't get an infection from the bullet.
Reuters, way back in 2018- reacting to the Skripal poisoning and Fancy Bear accusations, wrote a explainer piece about the GRU. (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-russia-gru-factbo...) From that: `According to a Western assessment of GRU seen by Reuters, the GRU has a long-running programme to run 'illegal' spies - those who work without diplomatic cover and who live under an assumed identity for years until orders from Moscow. "It has a long-running programme of 'illegals' reserved for the most sensitive or deniable tasks across the spectrum of GRU operations," the assessment said.`
Christo, Michael and Bellingcat have done more to make Europe safe than most intelligence services on the continent.
In fact many of those have shown to be compromised by the Russians from the right extremism side - Maassen in Germany, The Wirecard dude in Austria, etc.
It's not much safer now that a bunch of disposable Russians have been exposed.
Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.
Well it's a lot better than not letting them leave. Staying in and paying taxes there supports Putin; plus if they knew they are stuck in and can't move to the civilised world, they'd have to develop some sense of belonging with Russia. EU is making everything possible to suck out everyone with half the brain from Russia and this is a good thing. A lot of new immigration programs that appear to be specifically tailored to be convenient for Russians, appeared since the war began. So the logic is to:
- make tourism/travel harder by limiting visas and having people fly through far away stopovers (Dubai, Istanbul, or Belgrade for those who can afford $2K economy ticket)
- make immigration easier
- make any cross-border business harder - no SWIFT, no way to get in Russian IT-related money and most of the money overall even if transfer happens through 3rd world, etc.
This way people leave, realise they can't live in 2 countries and have to pick, then realise they can't do cross border business nearly as conveniently as they hoped, so concentrate on local or US market, then realise how much easier it is vs doing business in Russia (all they need to do that is a magic kick to initially force them to), and never look back.
Granted, few of them believe in democracy or even opposed to Putin. Mostly they see Europe as "safe place with a system which is easy to game", but that's OK. Their children will integrate and will be different. After all, save for American expats and Hong Kong refugees (who go to UK anyway), these are by far the best kind of immigrants Europe can hope for.
How about actually vetting them, even if post factum? Bellingcat, The Insider et al uncovered fake identities and actual biographies of agents with a tiny fraction of resources Western security agencies have. It's actually why these agencies get tax money.
Russians, even not GRU spies, are incredibly good at working around any possible regulation. If need be they will come with Kyrgyzstani or some Balkan passports and whole life histories thoroughly faked. Just for lulz. In Russia, if you google (well, yandex) for "make a rubber seal from imprint", you get hundreds of offers - with providers for this - 100% criminal in Russia, of course - service operating with proper high street worksshops not hiding from anyone - in Moscow alone. If you want to get any Russian document which normally requires several in-person visits and thorough checks, done from abroad, you just text a Telegram bot, pay a few hundred bucks (using credit card or paypal - which do not operate in Russia), and get it DHLed to you in days wherever you are in the world. The corruption machine covers entire society and people learned to adapt to it, being comfortable with working around any regulation like fish in the water.
Nice myth building but Bellingcat exposed an entire generation of GRU agents by noticing their fake passport numbers were sequential.
These people are not very smart at all, when you look at recent investigations done on shoestring budgets, many got exposed by extremely simple tradecraft errors and information that can be straight bought from Russian data brokers.
These people are not smart, it’s the western European services that are incompetent, ideologically blind and outdated.
They are not exactly dumb, but they didn't need to be smart given how apathetic European security agencies have been for decades.
Of course, Bellingcat barely scratched the surface and mainly exposed glorified hitmen rather than actual influence and information agents. There are still probably thousands of illegals with large amounts of legalized money, wide acquaintance networks and zero interest from who should be on top of their arses.
I'm not talking about published regulations, I'm talking about counterintelligence doing their jobs. Russians/Soviets were always almost dumbfounded at the ease at which they could penetrate very sensitive sources. Apart from the UK and to a lesser degree the US it was a total free-for-all even before the USSR broke up.
Fabricated personalities can and do get exposed.
There's no point explaining the Russian corruption to me, I lived there for a long time. In this case, however the corruption machine works against Russian agents.
Oh yes, it’s not like research says that children of immigrants integrate even worse than their parents.
We won't know who of them are "businessmen"
AFAIK there isn’t a clean answer to that question.
The lines between businessperson, gangster, intelligence agent are very fluid.
If you gain some success at one of those in Russia you need to start ingratiating yourself with the others because they will come and find you.
It’s like a more brutal version of businessperson / lobbyist in the US. If you want to excel in one you need to be both.
Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea what they’re saying.
I’m not up to date on Russian business culture I admit. Outside of hearing about how you can pay off the police to avoid other protection schemes.
Can you give me an example of a prominent Russia based businessperson who is regularly at odds with the Kremlin?
The US has a few examples of billionaires who decide to take on the White House, sometimes even capturing it for themselves.
If it was only the Maršalek guy im Austria, we literally had an intelligence agent on Russian payroll, police walking out of the Russian embassy with cash gifts...
And of course a certain party that is all too fond of the Russian corruption money, literally saying the want Austria to turn into a second Orban regime.
Do you have a source on the cash gifts?
In german, but wasn't cash, just gift bags as it turns out.
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000213247/wiener-polizi...
was it cash gifts?
Travel and border crossing data, recently made available thanks to an avalanche of terabytes leaked from Russian government databases, showed that Elena Šapošnikova is in possession of a secret Russian passport. Critically, her nine-digit passport number is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155, differing from those of her colleagues only by its last two digits. Šapošnikova’s is 646518955.
That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb?
Šapošnikova used this passport to travel between Greece and Russia on at least two occasions, once in December 2015 and the second time in December 2017. In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to her as a Czech citizen and eliding the digital footprint associated with the relevant application.
How does "bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa" "elide the digital footprint associated with the relevant application"? Why would the Czech government learn of a visa application to Russia?
The airline most likely would want to know that Šapošnikova had a visa, so they would have looked, and Šapošnikova would have shown them her Russian passport, which the airline probably would have reported to Czech authorities (I imagine that's what happens normally).
So this is just more sloppiness, or at least TFA reaches the wrong conclusion about the point of not Šapošnikova not applying for a visa. Perhaps she should have applied for a visa so as not to have to reveal her Russian passport to the airline, or she should have had a different Russian passport to show the airline.
In any case, having a block of passport numbers for a super-secret ops team is just beyond dumb. It's so dumb that I'm not sure I believe it -- I might sooner believe that such evidence was planted than that such evidence is real, but maybe the Russians just don't have enough Soviet-era intelligence clue left and haven't developed enough post-Soviet intelligence capabilities.
That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb?
Some old-fashioned generals did not account for the digital footprint that may be left and modern data mining capabilities when they designed it. In fact, that digital footprint may have not existed yet when the entire scheme was designed. When you need to tell everyone doing ID check that this person must not be bothered, you give them plates from some VIP series or a passport with a certain number - it was a common practice in Russia. I'm pretty sure that this has changed in last few years after those investigations and they write the laws and design the databases assuming zero trust (public property registries now hide or obfuscate information about some entries for example).
I too can guess that the point of the ID block was for Russian migration controls to more easily understand that "these people are special", but that would be idiotic whether it was done in 1950, in 1970 or in 2020.
And what's the point of Russian border control having them know?
They are Russian citizens with a Russian passport, they can enter their country without issues.
I know right? What tremendous foolishness. It's incredible, as in just not believable.
Not any more unbelievable than the sloppiness behind the attempted assassinations of Navalny, Skripal or the successful assassination of Litivenko
That is very sloppy of Russia. Why even bother doing something so dumb?
Because the scheme predates today's digital capabilities.
That doesn't make much sense.
If you have suspected spies, the first you'd do is pull their entry into the country.
It wouldn't take long to realize the similarity between passport numbers. Even in the 1950's.
You cannot draw any conclusions from this similarity alone. The scheme is common and sequential numbers were likely used in many other legitimate cases. You think this is a flop only because The Insider has found very close numbers of passports for people in the same military unit. But there are just 4 numbers of 100 in the same range. Is there any evidence that the remaining people belong to the same unit, are spies or even work for Russian government?
Sure, but that's no different back then than now?
You catch 3 spies in 1950. Someone shuffling through their paper files notices the numbers are close in range. You have a suspected 4th, and interestingly the passport number is clustered with the prior 3.
You use a super computer to analyze passport numbers and compare them to 3 known spies. The computer spits out a pattern. [...] You have a suspected 4th, and interestingly the passport number is clustered with the prior 3.
As per the original post it "is part of a numerical range reserved exclusively for members of Unit 29155".
I could see if it wasn't a numerical range, but rather a reserved pattern (e.g. the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 8th numbers were always sequential), then sure, a super computer could help you analyze known number to find a pattern. But it's just a group of number close in series? That seems discoverable by mere humans.
Why would they have needed this in 1970, or 1950?
While I agree with your general point, thinking about the passport numbers for a bit makes it plausible:
- You would have to reserve some numbers that can't be assigned to regular citizens.
- If you make those "random" - you need to store them in a database that can be checked against when issuing numbers to regular citizens.
- You wouldn't want such a database to exist.
- If you remove a whole "block," it's much simpler (do not assign passport numbers starting with...).
- Passports are NOT issued by the services themselves, and normal institutions (foreign office) only collaborate "covertly" — not everybody involved can be aware.
Fake passports that pass muster (regular patterns of a country's passport are known to foreign border guards, like checknums, typical issuance ranges, etc.) are not simple.
The reasons to have a separate range don't seem to be compelling. I'd hazard a guess no other secret service ever did that kind of blunder.
Yes: “Great, you’re our spy now. Keep it secret. Also, please always carry on you this piece of Russian evidence with serial numbers adjacent to all our other moles, because otherwise our own border patrol may reject you on entry with your Czech passport, I decided.”
So they’re telling us that Russia is that bad at spying. But the first commercial supersonic jet was the Tupolev 144, not the Concord.
The Tupolev 144 was famous for being an utter piece of shit, rushed for the propaganda value of being "first", put into service with half the flight testing as Concorde, and crashing multiple times with not that many flights on it's record
regarding passport and visa concerns:
no schengen exit stamp for EU citizens, that particular airline/route doesn't check for destination visa
I don't personally think this is top-tier spy stuff like this article is making it out to be, its spelled out for any 2nd passport collector on all those golden visa or perpetual traveller websites and literature
Interesting seeing this website with a .ru domain. Haven't been following them, but seems like they're based in Latvia. I don't think they would live comfortably being physically in Russia, but also seems like the state could seize the domain.
The Insider has been systematically repressed by the Putin's regime:
* "Foreign agent" label in 2021. This means massive restrictions on income sources and a target of gradually increasing restrictions as years go by.
* "Undesirable organization" in 2022. Donating to such organizations is a criminal offense.
* Roman Dobrokhotov - the Insider founder - has been wanted in Russia since 2021.
How does that not translate into the .ru domain name being seized?
As far as I'm aware, no ".ru" domains have been seized yet from media independent from the Russian government. Instead, they prefer to block website access - by law, every ISP has to install DPI-enabled hardware, which is used to censor the net.
I confirm that the the link doesn't open from Russia.
I'm aware of one - grani.ru had to become graniru.org a few years ago.
Why seize a domain when you can just block it country wide?
seizing the domain would give them nothing. Insider has a well established brand, they can easily reopen it in any other domain. Also getting some private information during the registration process might be helpful for the state.
They also have a mirrored .press domain
Can't wait for the HBO series
You hope it's an HBO series and not a Netflix one. I'd be very happy if the producers of Chernobyl worked on it
Craig Mazin who developed Chernobyl is also the showrunner for The Last of Us - season 2 is out next year. He'd be perfect for an East Germany based spy series with a tone similar to Chernobyl combined with The Lives of Others
That scene in Chernobyl breaking down the explosion is one of my favorite scenes of all time. It's a subject matter that is very specific, they covered in enough detail to be legit, but glossed over enough to not loose the audience. Something that a producer would want in a TV show and an attorney presenting a case. Of course all of the underlying "In Soviet Russia..." type references of the State does no wrong while having it shoved in their face were priceless to me as well.
TheInsider is a very anti-russian website.
Anti russian or anti putin?
Russians don't seem to be very against putin. So same.
This was a collaboration with Bellingcat. The same organization that was featured in the Navalny documentary as having found the assassination squad and eliciting a confession.
Russian website, yikes
On 23 July 2021 Russia's Ministry of Justice added The Insider to its list [ru] of "foreign mass media performing the functions of a foreign agent".[66][67] On 14 December 2021 a court in Moscow ordered the outlet to pay 1 million rubles.[68] On 15 July 2022, the publication was banned in Russia alongside Bellingcat. Following this restriction, any Russian citizen who aids Bellingcat or The Insider may face criminal prosecution; they would also be restricted from citing their publications. The office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia said that they were banned due to "posing a threat to the security of the Russian Federation"
I do wonder how they managed to retain that domain name. Most news orgs that were banned in Russia moved to other TLDs.
Yes, I thought that too but since we're on the Cold War level again, it might be a trick and the article a glorification of Russian agents...on the other hand, they work with Bellingcat and if those guys don't think it's fishy...at least I wouldn't dare to question their resources.
The website is banned sitewide on reddit. If you post any URL of it, it gets auto blocked and wont successfully submit.
.ru domains are awesome, they give owners a lot of freedom when it comes to hosted content
Elena was also deeply involved with her husband’s enterprise and intimately aware of Imex’s operations. In many ways, she seemed to be supervising and directing Nikolay’s activities in direct coordination with Andrey Averyanov, the head of Unit 29155. She communicated with Gen. Andrey Averyanov via email; his Gmail address, registered from a Russian IP address, is vitazi31@gmail.com. (“Vitazi” in Russian means “knights.”)
So what's the working hypothesis these days, either American SIGINT works, or it doesn't? Update my priors in a moment... What is it, 50/50 either true or false? Well, you know what they say; the Americans truly are on the game!
Seems implause that a Russian speaker will drop a soft spot in the word витязи. I would definitely search for somebody who is named VITaly and whose last name starts with AZI.
It’s simpler - vitazi is “winners” in Slovakian where this guy was deployed.
Yeah, any russian would use 'ya' to spell 'я'.
Interesting story; but as with all matters of this kind it is hard to know what is fact, what is fiction, what is disinformation/misinformation and what is propaganda.
Folks interested in spy-craft would love the classic Deception : The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA by Edward Jay Epstein. This book provides insight into how deception is at the root of all disinformation/misinformation/propaganda/etc. which can be extrapolated to what is happening today in the larger media industry - https://archive.org/details/Deception-TheInvisibleWarBetween...
well the warehouse being blown up is a fact in the interest of what country is not really a secret This has very little propaganda value for either side
Like a real life episode of The Americans
I have no idea why this comment is getting trashed
Where is the wife? Apparently the husband died.
Greece
There have been a number of recent high-level apprehensions of Russian and, particularly, Chinese spies in the EU. I wonder if there has been a major break for Western intel agencies recently
In March, The Insider, along with its investigative partners 60 Minutes and Der Spiegel, uncovered evidence implicating Unit 29155 in directed energy attacks thought to be the cause of Havana Syndrome
"Evidence" is such a strong word to use for what that investigation revealed, but I suppose it goes a long way of revealing the nature of articles like that
Amazing if true!
Let's focus on the real enemy TikTok. </sarcasm> Why isn't there more focus on Russia. Not saying China isn't spying but that why the CIA gets billions. Russia is actively blowing shit up.
I want to give some advice: Don't judge it by its first few episodes. When I first checked it out, the basic setup seemed rather inane and I stopped watching.
Then, a couple years later, I needed something to watch during long exercise sessions and I checked it out again. It was getting much more interesting by the end of the first season.
And every season got better and richer. By the very end, I experienced it as actually deep, especially in the way the Keri Russell character unexpectedly evolves. It was a real pleasure and I'm very glad I had the chance to enjoy it. Recommended!
I had initially ignored the show because they had cast Keri Russell which I had assumed to be a total light weight. So I missed it the first few years and then I realized after its fourth renewal - gee maybe its good - and well - I was completely wrong. She was amazing. The show was terrific. But I'm a sucker for 80s cold war dramatics.
Keri Russell a lightweight? I’m curious what gave you that impression as I’ve always thought of her as an excellent actress. Probably missing out on The Diplomat too if you like political intrigue at all.
Well on that topic, the French series "The Bureau" [1] was fantastic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bureau_(TV_series)
I don't understand why people like these shows, there isn't a proper story just things that happen that are essentially discarded at the beginning of the next season. There is never any real 3rd-act/resolution.
Are you sure you aren't confusing The Bureau with something else?
No. Every season ends on a cliffhanger that seems critical to the story and then is quickly resolved as if it were some minor point in the first episode of the subsequent season. This is the nature of this type of episodic television that runs for an indeterminate time and therefore has no real overarching story (but pretends to) like soap operas do.
I only know of a few examples where writers escape this. The first is to have the episodes be essentially disconnected from one another (e.g. Star Trek). The other is what "The Wire" did by having each season have its own plot that is properly resolved at the end of each season.
Riverdale is that thing you hate but made the primary characteristic of the show. Especially past season 1.
They’ll set up what feels like a season finale in most episodes, then instead of resolving it in the next, quickly toss it aside or even just ignore it. It’s not good, and I would not recommend it at all, but it’s maybe the weirdest show I’ve seen.
I remain unsure whether the writers were aware they were writing one extremely-long joke about television writing, or if they thought it was actually good.
Lost would like to have a word. I rented the 6-season DVD set to watch while recovering from an injury and the ONLY good thing about that show was that the first time through you had to wait a week between episodes.
Watching without the cliffhanger/socializing "what's next" discussion, and seeing them discard 87.3% of all plot points with reckless abandon made me hate the show after watching 2-3 seasons.
Riverdale features a character whose (incest-having? Probably.) brother is murdered, who becomes a leader of a bow-wielding vigilante club of women (this is not the only vigilante club in the show, mind you), whose grandmother becomes inhabited by the undying spirit of an ancient witch (also this character is herself a witch), whose family estate was built on a mine full of ghosts and also the mine contains lots of palladium which her Russian spy parents try to use to build a bomb (oh also she kills her dad and burns the mansion down early in the show but it’s fine, they just rebuild it and also there are alternate universe shenanigans), who gains fire-based superpowers and destroys a comet, who keeps her dead taxidermied brother around in a shrine-room (when he’s not alive again for whatever reason)… and that’s like 20% of the insane shit that happens with that character who is not even a main character. There are characters with way weirder sets of events in their biography. Also she’s in high school and a cheerleader, because why not? I think maybe she saves one of her lovers from the afterlife, too.
It’s nuts. If that sounds awesome, I assure you, it’s not, nothing ever matters in that show. Fascination at its commitment to a particular way of being terrible, and a little bit of joy from trying to describe the show to people who haven’t seen it (often they think I’m making stuff up) is what got me through.
I get that Lost is a show with a lot of problems, but this is a show dedicated to having a lot of problems. It’s swinging for the fences of having-problems. It’s astonishing. It’s… an achievement? It’s terrible. It’s the inverse of a miracle that it exists.
...but, but... bow-wielding club of vigilante women, you say? ;-)
I think you're confused about what episodic TV is. Star Trek is (or was) (generally) episodic. The Wire is serialized, as is most TV these days.
Some people like episodic TV, some people prefer serialized.
I don't think they're confused about episodic vs. serialized shows; they're talking about the plot structure of serialized shows often having a change of direction at every season boundary instead of resolution of the existing plot threads. That sort of meandering never-concluding plot can be annoying. One way to avoid that pitfall is by staying episodic, (Old Trek,) another is to wrap up each season and start from a relatively blank slate on the next, as if the seasons are episodes. (The Wire.) I think a third is to have all the story structure written in advance, as with a book adaptation, so there is a real through-line.
Yes I shouldn't have used the word episodic. The problem with your third solution is that it seems to be difficult to do with the current way TV series are financed and produced: You can't commit to multiple seasons at the outset and you also want to have an arbitrary number of episodes depending on how well the show is doing (milk more episodes if the show is doing well). There is also incentive to create cliffhangers so that subsequent seasons can be produced.
There are lots of mini-series which do book adaptations but it's hard to come up with examples that span multiple seasons: "My Brilliant Friend" did it I think and maybe you could argue early "Game of Thrones" but the story was never finished in book form either so it couldn't be said to be telling a complete story.
I don;t think "The Wire" gets enough credit for creating a format that conformed to the constraints of TV production while still being able to tell stories that spanned many episodes. You could have ended the series at any season (had it been cancelled) and it wouldn't have felt incomplete and yet the final season did feel like it completed an even larger story arc.
I have to mention Babylon 5 here, I don't think anything is as complete in terms of a 5 year, 110 episode plot. Note; don't read up on the plot, it's actually self-destructive.
Don’t think he can be talking about The Bureau either. It’s in my top ten all time TV shows.
A.k.a. "Le bureau des légendes": criminally underrated. Was available to view in Australia on SBS On Demand, where I serendipitously encountered it. It is right up there with the best of John LeCarré's film and television adaptations: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy", "Smiley's People", "The Little Drummer Girl", etc.
As another semi-obscure “spy” series check out the british production _The Sandbaggers_. Very lecarre-esque story that reflected the inanity and stakes of the cold war, written by a RN officer.
Apparently it's the actual spies favorite.
I can understand the reflex. To me she was "that actress from that show Felicity that I never watched". The Diplomat turned me around real quick.
The Americans was awesome, especially that last "showdown" climax. Best TV ever, along with parts of Breaking Bad.
I watched a couple episodes of The Diplomat and couldn't get into it. I'll give it another try.
Episode 3 is the one that kicked it up into the stratosphere for us.
Incidentally, and I realize the appeal for the show is significantly less if you aren’t a teenage girl (as I was when I watched it), but Felicity is excellent and she’s excellent in it. Like, beyond excellent. Like, there was the acting all the other WB actresses were doing in the late 90s/early 2000s and then there was what she was doing.
If that show had aired on a real broadcast network (as JJ Abrams' next shows were) and not on The WB, she would have been nominated for Emmys out the wazoo. As it was, she won the Golden Globe for that first season, but she should have at least been nominated for the Emmy for her work on that show, because she was every bit as good or better than her peers on cable or network.
I have a running theory that The Americans and The Diplomat are in fact set in the same universe. Keri Russell is still playing the same character, a deep-cover Russian agent, and now she has infiltrated the upper echelons of the US government...
Reminds me of The Double (2011)
Th Diplomat is excellent and she plays the role perfectly.
Everything I see her in, her acting style to me resembles a lifeless cardboard cutout. I get that that’s “the point” of the Americans, but if that’s all she’s bringing, something’s not working here. And in the diplomat it seemed exactly the same. Lifeless acting, and it seemed a lot of her personality was expressed by other characters because she wasn’t doing it herself.
you might also be thrilled by her performance in "The Diplomat". She is absolutely no light weight.
Strong advice for any show.
Agreed. I learned this with Black Sails (first few episodes were huh?) and it evolved into something awesome. The Americans as well. I think that’s usually the case with shows that are trying something new and haven’t quite got the formula down. First season of Star Trek was a freak show of theater that somehow, worked. Thrived. And blossomed. Let’s just pray Bob Igor doesn’t get his hands on the franchise.
I now follow this advice with all shows. I’ll give it a full season to see if they develop something I’m interested in following.
> Bob Igor
Is he the hunchback brother of Bob Iger, Disney CEO?
I plead the 5th and assume no association… the wrath of the house of mouse is real.
Black Sails in particular evolved with the writers' historical knowledge of real pirates as they moved from made up nonsense they read to actual research.
Thanks for the Black Sails suggestion. I hadn't heard of it but will check it out. High praise on IMDB.
Except Community, and BoJaxk
Bojack ep1 is terrible but it immediately gets better, and it’s gold by the end of s1.
Yeah I just recommend people skip the first half of season 1
Community is easy - the ones with Dan Harmon involvement are the best. 100% causation.
Try this: look up the most highly rated episodes on IMDB and watch only those. Missing the crummy episodes usually does not interfere with understanding the story arc. Often, I set a minimum IMDB score that I will watch, like 8.5 or 9.0 to capture only the best. This works well with series that:
- take a year or two to find their footing or
- have a large cast (some mediocre) that get their own story lines of no consequence occasionally or
- introduce cast members that don't make it or
- implode towards the final season.
I have done this for many series that are somewhat uneven:
- The Americans
- How I Met Your Mother
- Fringe
- Orphan Black
- Halt and Catch Fire
- House of Cards (watching the ratings allows you to miss all of season 6)
- Arrested Development
- Bojack Horseman
- Veep
- 30 Rock
- Jane the Virgin
- Black Mirror
- The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
- Suits
- Six Feet Under
- La Femme Nikita
- The Blacklist
- Peaky Blinders
- The Romanoffs
- Ozark
- Westworld (sometimes dropping episodes does not matter)
- Succession
- Borgen
And all of these series have lots of strong episodes.
Series I would not do this with:
- The Bear
- Breaking Bad
- Money Heist
- The Serpent
- Fleabag
- Chernobyl
- The White Lotus
Wow, thanks for the watching list! I agree on season 6 of House of Cards, sadly Robin Wright can't carry the series the way Kevin Spacey did.
Albeit, we got bored of money heist after season 1.
If you did not make it past season one of Money Heist, then you missed out on:
- outstanding performances by Spanish actresses Ursula Corbrero, Itziar Ituno, Alba Flores, and Najwa Nimri and
- humming Bella Ciao to yourself for two months.
This is a very interesting way to watch a show. It feels almost illegal or wrong to me, lol. I'm one of those people who won't completely finish reading the end of a book series or game (witcher 3 easy example) because I'll like a show/game so much I don't want it to end.
I'll go through this list and start from episode 1, though, so I appreciate the list of good shows!
skipping succession episodes is insane, i'm sorry. it had a niche following but the entire series is a work of art in every aspect. i don't think i can point to a single episode that was "wasted".
I have a feeling this would work well with MadMen.
There were always a few "filler" episodes that didn't move the story forward much, if at all.
But sometimes those filler's are just good tropey fun! :-)
Thanks. I have a 3 episode rule. If I'm not into it by the end of the 3rd episode, I don't continue. I'll give this one another shot.
I guess, but there are some all-time great series with relatively weak first seasons, e.g. Halt and Catch Fire and The Leftovers.
Breaking Bad.
This doesn't filter out the series that start off strong with no contingency plan to get picked up, then they get signed to 2+ more seasons, go "ah shoot we blew all our story ideas in season 1" and slow play 3 episodes worth of content for an entire season. So. many. like. this.
I have blasted through four seasons of The Americans but have been really having a lot of trouble getting through the 5th season.
It does change season to season but the finale ... just talking about finale ... is at such a different level in tying up things that it elevates the entire season and the entire series. And of course the last few episodes leading to the finale tell a story so they eventually add value even though it may not be apparent when the season starts.
Exactly my experience. Many years ago I watched perhaps 3-4 episodes and stopped. I recently finished the entire series and by the end I was binging it in the most traditional sense, watching multiple episodes a day, telling myself I'd watch the last 20 minutes of this episode in bed and end up watching 2 more after that, etc.
It's a fantastic show and while there are certainly some smaller arcs that could have been written better as is the case with any long-running show, especially one made for cable, it doesn't spend the two seasons completely destroying its reputation like most do. It ended at just the right time.
Thanks for the advice. I shut it off after one episode. I'll give it another try at some point.
Thanks for the comment.
I did watch half the first season years ago and wasn't too captured, will give it another go.
The best thing about the show is how stories constantly take unexpected turns. It will sometimes seem like they’re setting some big thing up and then suddenly the characters are caught completely off guard and the show makes a hard left. It might sound contrived the way I’m explaining it, but it all makes perfect sense in the way the show unfolds.
Good advice: I also found the start not a good salesman but some peristence worth the wait.
I've found the show because of a post on reddit listing TV critics ratings for TV shows, and this stood out as one of the few which were good from start to end.
We're at season 5 atm and up until this point, I can confirm the ratings.
...I just wish I could find that reddit post again. Can't remember if there were others good shows on it.
The most realistic Russian sleeper scenario imo was in Slow Horses. Brits don't insult your intelligence too greatly in their spook shows; the American variety always involves some sort of super-human characters. It's good as entertainment, the Americans, but just over the top.
This is why I could never get into House of Cards, it's just so over the top compared to something like Borgen which for me to this day is still one of the best political dramas ever made, also sadly went somewhat under the radar especially across the pond.
It wasn't any over the top than the original. It mostly just followed The BBC production almost to the letter, except with US spin.
Until Season 4?. Whenever the re-election campaign started. Joel Kinnaman, while a great actor (loved him in Altered Carbon) was a massive miscast as a plausible candidate for the GOP. Mostly due to youth. And the last season was a Game of Thrones-level utter disaster.
This is the first time I see a fellow Altered Carbon fan in the wild.
In the wild? For people who read books, they probably weren't a fan. For people who don't care about source material, the show was amazing. I'm still pissed it was cancelled. It was apparently ridiculous expensive to produce and that's all the more reason they should have kept going with it: to show that we want more of those types of things.
Recasting of the main character didn't help, even if it's explainable in-universe.
I thought it was a great standalone show. What I found unforgivable were the underlying plot changes vs the books.
The Last Envoy? What? That did not even become a plot point (at least in season 1, I bailed pretty early in S2). Also, Envoys are terrorists and not the ultimate-special ops forces?
This is what really threw me. In the book, Kovacs was hired because he had been a highly-trained UN envoy. It made little sense for him to be hired as a known terrorist. I wasn't much of a fan of any of the terrorist cell background, or the other background elements like those with his sister, that they decided to add to the show.
let's make it three then. Read the books, enjoyed the series(s). Want a unicorn backpack to carry around, but don't think I can carry it off (pun intended) the way Joel did.
I thought the original was scoped and paced perfectly: no fluff, all action (of the suspensy kind), didn't wait for itself to peter out.
The remake just drags on and on and on. Tons of irrelevant detail and uninteresting sidestories.
That's how I felt about Succession for 3 seasons.
I felt it just dragged and dragged and I couldn't understand what was the fuss.
Then I started watching some YouTube commentary and starting to understand that the irrelevant and uninteresting was actually relevant and interesting.
ATN, the succession, that was all bogus for character development, a setup.
I feel like House of Cards may fall in a similar category there. It's not much about the action but character evolution and dynamics.
Oh I have no doubt that was the aim in the HoC remake. It just wasn't any good, unlike Succession. Not all character development and dynamics are interesting.
The scope and pacing in the original was just perfect. Just because you can layer on more, doesn't mean it's gonna make it better. Much was pure tedium and seemed to serve filling time first and foremost.
I stopped in the episode where, for me at least, out of absolutely nowhere, Spacey's character seduces a body guard and him and his wife have a 3some with him. I'm sure many people loved that. For me, I was like WTF? what was completely out of left field, added to punch up ratings or just it insert shock value. I stopped watching. What that in the UK version?
except it made more sense Francis Urquhart being Conservative than Frank Underwood being Democrat
Did you check out the original UK House of Cards? Worth catching if you can find it.
Yeah but "the dogs" in Slow Horses is laughably out of control ridiculous at points...reaches out of your immersion in the interesting story to grab you, shake you, and declare what you're watching is absurd hyperbole. Very disappointed by that aspect and I hope they're done with that excess.
That's a fair statement. My standard for this type of show remains BBC's Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (1979) and the follow up Smiley's People (1982).
Alec Guinness owns Smiley. Just perfect. Absolutely gripping yet low budget [+] it actually demands that you use your intellect to keep up. If you haven't seen those I say whip up ye old torrent client and get some.
Anyways, I did say "too greatly". Someone up there says "no spoilers" so ..
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080297/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083480/
agreed: john le carre bbc is great. also loved Luther, slightly off topic.
Back in the late 80s they did a TV production of Deighton's Berlin Game, Mexico Set, London Match. Unfortunately, BBC/GranadaTV do not wish to release it on dvd or streaming even in original quality, assuming the tapes still exist. There is, however, a low quality youtube (probably a copy of home VHS):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezekuICeYlg&list=PLSpG6jj23V...
Watched with my father growing up, may even have some home copies myself.
Eh, maybe? There's got to be _something_ for sociopathic ex-squaddies to do who don't want to go back to civvie street. I found their existence believable, if not the high speed Range Rover driving stuff. It's very clearly not going for full-on realism, obviously a fantasy spy show. So the dogs work in that context - at least for me.
EDIT: someone else mentioned Tinker Tailor (either the '80s BBC miniseries or the Gary Oldman movie - once again he's killing it) which is far more grounded. That might be more up your street? I enjoyed both a lot. Bleak as hell though.
It's called Realism.
I mean this is just American politics in general.
It's a show specifically about MI5 in Britain.
That's a very way to express that idea. I'll be reusing that, if you don't mind.. :-) I've always expressed it more crudely as having the feeling of being forcefully lobotomized by the producers..
As in, British shows don't necessarily explain or show everything? I'm a bit lost here.
Well, looks like British television isn't for you.
As in: those shows don't insult your intelligence by presenting something impossible or untruthful as a fact, and by assuming that the viewer will be too intellectually challenged to question anything spoon fed to him.
You'll know when you see a show or a broadcast that gives you the impression your brain is leaking out of your ears.
That was a brilliant show. Not just because of Gary Oldman. Well-drawn characters throughout.
I've just started season 3 so no spoilers please :)
If you enjoy Slow Horses, I highly recommend the book series it’s based on. I’m not sure if Mick Herron wrote the books with Gary Oldman in mind, but it’s the perfect Oldman character nonetheless. The show is quite a faithful adaptation of the books, even down to some lines. Excellent review of Oldman in the 3rd season: https://defector.com/gary-oldman-is-gross-and-loving-it?gift...
Gary Oldman was a lot of it.
I had read and enjoyed the first two books. After the first couple of episodes I had to admit I was watching it for Gary Oldman more than anything else. I'd watch just a supercut of him expressing disdain for and disappointment with his subordinates.
Sandbaggers is still up there as one of the best, I rewatched it last week.
I am English, and old enough to have seen "Sandbaggers". I don't know how I never heard of this show until I found the complete series on Youtube a few months ago. Now I am enjoying viewing it for the first time.
The latest season got a bit silly at the end, but still entertaining.
I dunno. I watched the first few episodes over COVID and I thought it just the same as any US cable show: sex, crash-bangs and manufactured plot twists.
Maybe I'm wrong but IIRC there's a sex scene in the first five minutes of the pilot. Like, don't insult my intelligence.
Smart people don’t like sex scenes?
I guess smart people visit porn sites when they want to watch some.
For me it's just boring filler and I skip them.
While we’re expressing opinions: in a show about navigating a partnership that accepts seduction as a necessary part of intelligence work (not solely of a romantic nature, but often), where the main characters are also being seduced by the capitalist lifestyle — I suspect some smart people might also view those less-clothed scenes as contributing (and even critical to) the underlying themes.
I'm with them, I don't enjoy those scenes (in general - haven't seen the one in question). Not because I'm a prude, I just find them a little boring and they usually take too long - and often are immersion breaking themselves with how they clothe or position characters to appeal to TV decency standards. An implication and a fade away is enough for me, unless something pivotal happens within the scene itself.
I chuckled and thank you for the compliment!
Also: I agree. It's pretty much always a tedium. Now, American series almost always suffer from that: not just the sex scenes are used as filler, and could be replaced with a line or two suggesting the events if relevant. House of Cards is my go to example: just take the British original for how you can condense the story by a factor of 10 without any loss. Putting it that way: it'd be hilarious if a compression format would work this way.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3045
US:ian media doesn't have sex scenes, it has symbolic innuendos standing in for sex scenes.
That was probably the only "cheap stunt" of the entire series. They still had to consider the average viewer, I suppose. But I know a few people I recommended it to were turned off by that exact early scene and never got past it. Really unfortunate.
Thanks for this. Maybe I'll give it another go.
The real Americans was you, all along
The Americans is a highly sensationalized and fictionalized retelling of the life stories of Elena Vavilova and Andrey Bezrukov. From a historical/accuracy perspective, there’s basically zero resemblance of the show and the source material beyond the premise.
As drama, it excels in the drama around the marriage rather than the actual fact of them being spies, and has been praised as “fundamentally a show about a marriage”. If you’re looking for a spy thriller, you might look elsewhere. It’s very “American TV” and doesn’t really stray from the formula
I watched the entire series, The Americans. It's thrilling and well-crafted television, but totally bogus as a representation of how illegals worked in the USA.
Illegals were/are special assets that would never be concurrently running so many different operations and engaging in risky wet (i.e. assassination) operations right and left. More likely they would spend many boring years cultivating their positions in society and a select few important contacts. That doesn't make for good television.
Typically the best television stories are taking an entire organizations stories and distilling it down to just a few people. Easier to develop characters that way and keep the audience from being confused by actors that don't contribute much.
A good 101 on an illegal story is by Jack Barsky, on his own account. He wrote a book on it, there's various interviews with him, a podcast series (The Agent) and he got interviewed by Lex Fridman (#301). I recomment The Agent podcast series [1] on his (life) story. Also available on Apple Podcast.
[1] https://open.spotify.com/show/5DToOunQsM18OmGD5eVRXR
The Americans : espionage :: The Sopranos : organized crime.
The Sopranos was not especially realistic. But realism wasn't the point; there was just enough verisimilitude to serve the narrative, which was a kind of morality play. It's the same with The Americans, which is at bottom more of a relationship story than one about espionage. (We agree, I think.)
A lot of research went into the show, but it shows up in the same ways research shows up in Mad Men.
Don't watch it expecting to learn a bunch of stuff! That's not the point.
(A top 5 series for me.)
We clearly didn't watch the same show. The nature in which they use disguises alone was some of the best use in a show I've ever seen. There's also some very clever code words and traps that scary in their realism.
Not to discredit South East Asia but Germany is where the Cold War took place. Especially the second part of it. RAF, for example, was pretty much sponsored by East Germany.
So many good series made involving the subject though. Both drama and documentary. I mean, you do want drama and not documentary? Cause the story The Americans is inspired by is documented.
For drama, check Deutschland '83 and the two successors. Has a great cast.
And of course there is Clifford Stoll's book about how he caught Hagbard Celine (see the movie '23' with a young August Diehl who later broke through in Hollywood).
German cinema, both West-German and modern, has gems regardless (I am not German btw, subs are easy to come by).
I do agree that the "Deutschland 83/86/89" TV series was great espionage drama, but I also think your Eurocentric bias is showing. I have often wondered why Asia has been continuously overlooked in the espionage TV drama stakes. Even John LeCarré's "The Honourable Schoolboy" never got adapted to the screen. My conclusion is that it is not due to a lack of good material but due to political and cultural reasons. Westerners are uncomfortable with portraying Asian geopolitical adversaries such as Communist China and North Korea because they don't want to be accused of racism. When was the last time you saw or read a tale about Chinese spies? Sadly, this has resulted in a vast, unexplored region of espionage drama being totally ignored. I wonder if they make Asia-focussed spy drama in Japan?
Right now I am watching The Sympathizer, a Vietnamese drama about the Cold War, focussed on the Vietnamese take on the matter. Its on HBO Max. Weekly release so not yet finished. They just added the third episode, and I've almost finished that. Seems very much promising.
South Korea also has a cinema scene. I once saw a Korean horror and it was unlike anything I saw before. Like, really weird. But it had nothing to do with spy drama.
A lot of spy drama or action from the Cold War era is very over the top and/or propagandist/fear mongering. Drama is dramatized, but can easily be regarded as overdramatized, bending the truth too much in the process. At such point, a good documentary on the subject is probably preferred. The faith I have in a country like China or North Korea being authentic on such matters in documentary is near zero, and thus I assume their drama on the matter will equal the low effort American cinema we saw previous century.
That a band like Laibach was allowed to play in North Korea is very much telling to me.
I watched the first episode the Sympathiser last week. It occurs to me that South Korea is the only Asian country that has produced significant modern-era (i.e. Cold War and later) espionage dramas that have been widely distributed in the West: these with the two Koreas as protagonists, of course. The only other Asia-focussed espionage dramas that spring to mind are a few with pre-WWII era plots involving Imperial Japan.
Have some fun, watch Atomic Blonde followed by Phantom Doctrine playthrough.
The Americans is pretty banal and follows the basic script you would expect. It's good background noise if you want 80s nostalgia though.
I'm with you. I don't really agree with all the praise it gets. I liked it at first but it really seemed to run into the "manufactured drama" trap that a lot of TV shows run into when they try and keep it going. It really ruined my suspense of disbelief.
Agreed. As someone who's read and watched a lot of Soviet-era spy fiction, along with lots of actual history, I found it pretty underwhelming. I forced myself through 3 seasons and gave up.
It really doesn't though. For example, I didn't expect to see so many totally innocent people get killed. I've also never seen a marriage portrayed with so much tension so realistically. I grew up in an abusive household and Americans is the first show to to give me ptsd flashbacks.
In a side note: how do you check for the level of nudity/sex in a show or movie? I use the rating but I don’t find it provides enough finer grain: some R rated ones are OK to watch with my 13 year old but some have graphic sex scenes which I feel uncomfortable to watch together.
Common Sense Media reviews, like this one. [1]
IIRC, there's a bit of sex in The Americans, and a fair bit of discussion of how the spies had to sleep with targets as part of their training, and in the field. The father character also has a pretty dicey relationship with a much younger woman/girl, in order to access her father's home office.
1: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/the-americans
I don't know how accurate it is, but IMDb [1] will usually tell you exact episodes of inappropriate content. Individual episodes also have a parental guide, but it looks less used.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2149175/parentalguide
I'd worry more about a particular scene of sexual violence in Season 3, Episode 2 ("Baggage") than any graphic sex scenes. It's basic cable, so you'll see some butt cheeks here and there but never any nipples. Watch S3E2 yourself in advance and then fast forward through the relevant part for your 13 year old. You'll know it when you see it.
I loved the show, but in retrospect, the premise of 2 Soviet spies being the most prolific serial killers in the history of the DC area without being caught is a bit weak.
Masha Gessen did some work on making the spoken Russian be more authentic https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/translating-th... ( She must have given up on Keri Russell )
Peter Jacobson (FBI Agent Wolf) appears in comedy Russian TV show inspired by the Americans "Adaptation" https://www.poconorecord.com/story/entertainment/2018/05/26/... . I've seen episode 1 available on the internet, full series is hard to find.
It's estimated there are 25-50 serial killers active in the US at any given time. There are also around 6k new unsolved murders each year. The point is that a murder done by someone with no connection to the victim is very hard to solve.
I mean there are several stories of these deeply implanted KGB sleeper-type agents in real life. Sure, not serial killers (who knows), but everything else is quite authentic.
Here is a couple from Germany: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/15/married-pair-r...
They had an oblivious daughter and everything.
I second this. Of all the TV shows I've watched over the years, this is one is easily the one I've spent the most time thinking about, even long after I finished watching it.
While it has it's ebs and flows, it never got bad or dull for me.
And it contains a ton of details you might think is for dramatic effect or cinematography, but often it turned out to be based on actual practices, historic fact or just have a practical purpose for the characters.
The whole Est conference thing was real and pretty popular in the '80s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training
HIGHLY highly recommend The Bureau, which is the most real spy show I have ever watched. The Americans is excellent (i've watched all of it) but has some unreal TV-like drama that The Bureau is able to avoid and is imo the pinnacle of spy genre. George Clooney is apparently making an American remake of The Bureau (which is in French).
Couldn't agree more, The Bureau had me hooked from start to finish. After the first episode, I basically binge-watched the entire 5 seasons non-stop. Subtitles are not an issue for me as I always have them on anyway. It takes a couple of episodes to get into it as they don't do out of their way to explain things. It's like you've been dropped into a job with an intelligence service with no training.
"Tehran" (Israeli spy thriller) is another really good spy series. You really get a feel for the oppressive environment in Iran under the thumb of the IRGC.
Also "The Spy" with Sascha Baron Cohen is excellent too.
Heh it's all too real for us in Eastern Europe.
Back in Soviet Union if you ever get a blessing to visit another country, you have interviews with KGB, one before leaving and one on return. Upon return they asked if you bringing any contraband, currency and one of the question is "Why did you return?".
So, my parents lived with me in NZ for last few months. When they got back dad's boating mates decided to grill him - Why did you return?
It was fun all around.
To be allowed to leave you had to sign a paper promising to "tell" the secret service on your travel companions after the trip. So everybody on the trip was living in paranoia of one another.
It was mostly to later have some blackmail material on you if you became opposition - you signed the paper so you're an agent of the system.
And when (if) you returned - regular people assumed you have some connections to the regime and treated you like an enemy.
One of the best TV shows of all time, I second your recommendation. Rare show that gets better with each season.
i don't know about that, the last 1 or to some extent the last 2 seasons were a bit lazy
Easily one of the top 10 shows ever created IMHO
How is this show "forgotten"? It's one of the most critically acclaimed shows of all time
Don't do FX like that.
They had a juggernaut lineup of great shows at the time (which is why The Americans kind of got pushed to a backburner).
and if you want to read about the real world Russian illegals that were caught in the US and traded in the 2010 spy swap, read the FBI pages on Operation Ghost Stories: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/operation-ghost-stories-ins...
Loosely based on an actual case.
Another recommendation is "Person of Interest". The series was ahead of its time with the implications of AI on society. It also has spies.
It spreads the interesting stuff out too much for me. Halfway through the third season I realized the episodes were starting to run together in my head and if I waited more than a day to start watching again I ended up rewatching half the episode before realizing I'd already seen it.
I'd recommend Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy instead.
love this show - big fan of Stan