The Media & Their Narratives.

[BIAD]

If one forgives the grammar and poor attention on things like details, this -one would assume, important notification
to the public of an organised scheme to have neighbours monitoring neighbours should be at least, well laid-out and
easy to understand.
Except it's not!

There's a Professor Richards or 'Prof' Richard, an undefined spook-turned-academic who is informing the British or
'Brits' as The Sun newspaper likes to call them, that Vlad Putin has his agents on every street corner and at any
moment, their vodka -laced breath may steam-up Mrs Miggins' front-window as the camouflaged Cossack prepares
to slay the little biddy in the gravy-stained apron.

We're constantly bombarded with warnings of disinformation and yet, when the periodical that was once a must-have
for any construction-site bricklayer's ass-pocket gets the chance to tell the winners of the World's Best Coloniser Award
that they've been overwhelmed by Russian spies, we get this... thing.

Maybe I'm wrong and the guys and gals on The Sun news-desk are just laughing around the water-cooler as their readers
accept the article may have been written in broken-English... Yeah, that must be it.

SPY NEXT DOOR Russia has sprawling network of sleeper agents in UK who could KILL on command,
warns ex-MI6 agent

'Russia has a sprawling network of sleeper agents in the UK who could kill on command, an ex-MI6 agent has warned.
Former spook Julian Richards said Moscow has become so effective at spying in Britain that intelligence agencies "don't
know" just how many rogue operatives are active in the UK.


Run for the hills, the world is full of Russian spies.

The warning comes as suspected Russian spies Sergey Skvortsov and his wife Elena Koulkova were arrested in Sweden.
The couple were well known, well liked, happily chatted with their neighbours - only to be swooped by elite cops in two
Blackhawk helicopters. Both are believed to have been acting as spies for Putin for the better part of a decade - hiding in
plain sight as regular every day citizens.

Putin is said to be obsessed with sending spies into regular civilian roles with aim of draining the West of critical commercial
secrets. In fact, so high is the threat of infiltration that former CIA and MI6 officers have warned Brits to watch over their shoulder amid fears hundreds of Putin's goons are infiltrating the UK.

"Either they’re very, very good at it, in which case there could be a lot of them out there that we just don’t know about,"
Prof Richards told The Sun Online. "Theoretically they could assassinate someone, if they needed to. This is where the
Skripal case is interesting and the Litvinenko case before it. It was the GRU - military intelligence - that was exposed as
being involved."

Known as 'Illegals', these spies spend years blending into normal civilian life and take up regular jobs in critical industries like national defence with the aim of manoeuvring themselves into positions of "access". And the UK, according to Prof Richards, is high on their radar.

"We know that the UK has always been a particular target for the Russians," explained Prof Richard. "They know that we’re
potentially a very useful connection into the American intelligence system." "That was the logic of the Cambridge spies. That
worked beautifully well because weren't only an important intelligence player ourselves but we were also a very, very close
intelligence ally, and that’s the potential - a sort of ‘back door’ into American intelligence."...'

So after watching the remake of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Prof Richards has given his warning and now needs to climb
down from this poor rendering of panic-porn. Yet, the use of modal verbs continues.

'...He said these 'invisible' spooks are trained to infiltrate commercial companies providing services to host governments
like British Aerospace. They often start off in menial jobs and make their way up the ladder, sometimes using blackmail
and bribes along the way.

Though the threat remained low and their use largely expensive and ineffective, their real impact can be hard to gauge.
"Either it’s a big problem and we don’t have an idea of the scale of it and how many are out there, but I think it’s more
likely it’s not that big of a problem, and because they are so difficult to do, there probably aren’t many of them out there.
"But there are some, particularly in the UK."

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer said Russian 'illegals' could be employed in a company for years before becoming
'operational'. "What you want with an illegal is someone not under surveillance," he told us.

"You can use them for spotting reports. That’s when you find someone like a Pentagon officer, or a State Department officer,
and then you look at who seems interesting, who’s going into an interesting job, and you tell Moscow and maybe later on
someone posted overseas will approach them."

Among their dirty bag of tricks is luring persons of interest into an affair and using it against them.
Also known as Kompromat, this is a well-oiled technique was used in the KGB and its modern equivalent, the FSB.
'Illegals' are also known to prey on 'financially vulnerable' officials in high positions and work to lure them in with the
guarantee of money. "It’s a lot of money for such a low hanging fruit," Baer explained. "But if they’re good, you just
can’t find them."

Baer claims Putin could very well be sending unprecedented numbers of illegals into the West as he tries to recreate
Russia's past as a spying behemoth...'

Me-thinks the last sentence is wishful thinking from this faculty member of the University of Buckingham, it seems these
Ruskie spies are only interested in Governmental jobs and such bureaucrats tend to not read The Sun newspaper.

'...He said: "I think Putin’s fascinated with ‘illegals’ and it goes all the way back to the old days when they were so effective
like the Cambridge Five - Rudolf Abel and people like that - they’re historical figures and I think Putin would like to recreate that." Western spy agencies have long struggled to keep its ranks clean of Russian double agents.

In August, a Russian spy reportedly posed as a jewellery designer for ten years and infiltrated NATO by luring commanders
into honeytraps was ousted after going on vacation to Moscow and never returned. This year David Smith, 58, a former
British embassy guard in Berlin, was charged with nine offences relating to breaking the Official Secrets Act after being
accused of spying for Russia.

Last October, eight Russian spooks were expelled from NATO in a major crackdown in the lead up to the war in Ukraine
and another four of Mad Vlad's goons are feared to be operating in Westminster in secret. Former UK intelligence officials
said it's likely the Russian security services have recruited political staffers, party officials and those with "some degree of
political access" inside Parliament.

In recent years Britain's closest ally, the US, has also found themselves rooting out agents working for Putin.
Maria Butina was found to have been acting as a spy and attempting to steer US politics as she embedded herself in Washington DC. She was jailed in 2018 before being deported back to Russia, where she is now a member of Putin's
parliament - the State Duma.

And then Russian model Anna Chapman, the daughter of a KGB official, was arrested in 2010 after she is suspected to
have worked as an agent in the US. She was given back to the Kremlin regime as part of a spy swap deal along with
nine other suspected agents...'

You mean we have spies too?! Ah, but ours are good spies. One may notice that during this 'if-could-possibly'-Le
Carre-esque potboiler, there's no mention of Russian spies being caught in Britain. Oh, there's a warning that a
quartet of 'Mad Vlad's goons' might be operating in the hallowed halls of British politics.
But arrests... no double-crossing disgruntled Russian waiting beside a resolute Limey at Checkpoint Charlie looking
for a trade-off.

'...Among those agents was Vladimir and Lidiya Guryev - who lived in New Jersey with their two daughters, 11 and 9,
under the aliases of Richard and Cynthia Murphy. The couple attempted to influence US politics, with Lidiya going after
an associate of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid in 2008.

Another couple with children was also part of the spy swap - Mikhail Kutsik and Nataliya Pereverzeva, also known as
Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills. The duo were rumbled as they claimed be from America and Canada despite their thick
accents - and they operated by received coded radio transmissions.

Mikhail A. Vasenkov and his wife Vicky Pelaez were accused spying for Russia after authorities discovered Vasenkov's
alias - Juaz Lazaro - had died of respiratory failure in Uruguay aged 3 in 1947. Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova
pretended to be Canadian citizens living in the US. Bezrukov claimed to be the son of a Canadian diplomat named Donald
Heathfield and his wife Vavilova pretended to be a real estate agent called Tracey Lee Ann Foley...'

But wait -I hear you cry, here's comes an example of espionage in Britain, the famous Skripal case.

'...Britain has also been the target of Russian agents in recent years - the most infamous case being the nerve agent
attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Putin's men - Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov - managed to fly into London
Gatwick and catch the train to Salisbury where they attempted to kill the defector and his daughter with the nerve agent
Novichok in 2018...'

The Sun:

Er... that's it? That's the only example of Vlad's invasion of Britain?! Jeez, one would be better-off reading Rogue Nation's
account of what supposedly occurred in the Wiltshire environs of retired Russian spies and dumpster-diving drunkards.
So please do. (Link to Archived RN Thread (Rogue Nation's 'The Skripal Incident