During the Cold War and in the following decades, the intelligence services of the Soviet Union and Russia, showing remarkable ingenuity, used a variety of methods to conduct intelligence and sabotage activities abroad. One of the most sophisticated methods was the creation and financing of various pseudo-social, cultural, educational, religious, and trade organizations. These structures served as a cover for espionage, recruitment of agents, sabotage, and destabilization of the political situation in Western countries.
The KGB and GRU actively worked on the formation of agent networks abroad, which included front organizations engaged in promoting communist ideology, destabilizing the political situation, spreading disinformation, discrediting the governments of Western countries, spreading lies about life in the USSR, and, most importantly, served as a cover for sabotage and espionage. Soviet secret services established trade and cultural representative offices abroad and used them as a cover for subversion and intelligence activities. They were actively used for intelligence and sabotage special operations, networking with local elites, gathering secret information, and recruiting agents.
Cultural organizations, such as the Soviet Houses of Culture, societies of friendship with foreign countries, and international movements for peace and disarmament, were created by Moscow and used for espionage, sabotage, destabilization of the political situation in other countries, and recruitment of new agents. In the USSR, relations with foreign countries were exclusively within the competence of the State Security, starting with the Foreign Department of the OGPU in the 1920s.
Participation in international exhibitions served as a channel for information gathering and technology theft.
Embassies and consulates served as cover and residence centers for Soviet intelligence. More than half of the staff of Soviet embassies and consulates were KGB and GRU officers operating under diplomatic cover. The same pattern is seen today in Russian embassies.
Scientific organizations, such as the USSR Academy of Sciences, organized international scientific conferences and exchanges under the control of the secret services and solely for espionage, recruiting agents, and stealing technology.
The USSR created fictitious commercial companies and trade missions that existed only on paper or performed minimal activities, serving as a base for conducting and financing intelligence special operations, subversion, assassinations, and kidnappings abroad.
The USSR intelligence services used international organizations such as the UN, UNESCO, and others to gather classified information, access government agencies of various countries, and recruit agents.
Nothing changed with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The personnel, methods, and goals of the Russian security services, while undergoing some evolution, remained the same. The agent networks created during the Soviet era have been preserved. Recruited agents did not disappear. After a brief period of confusion following the collapse of the USSR, everything quickly fell into place and work continued in the same mode, with the same people and the same goals.
Russia’s special services, such as the FSB, GRU, and SVR, began to capitalize on the opportunities created by the mass emigration of former Soviet citizens. Millions of former Soviet citizens in Europe and America have created ideal conditions for infiltrating and recruiting agents, increasing influence in Western societies, and infiltrating government structures in Western countries.
At present, in all democratic countries, there are numerous structures created and financed by Moscow that serve as agent centers and channels for disseminating Kremlin propaganda and disinformation.
Among the most influential of these are the Russian Centers for Science and Culture (RCSC), also known as «Russian Houses,» and the Coordinating Councils of Russian Compatriots (CCRC). In addition, there are many less visible organizations, such as women’s associations, sports clubs, and other associations. All these structures pursue the same goals and are under the control of the same control centers in Moscow. Each of these structures is oriented to work with its specific audience.
Russian special services actively use private companies as a cover. These can be firms engaged in real or fictitious trade, or consulting agencies supposedly providing analytical and management services.
Virtually all Russian journalists working abroad are either FSB, GRU, or SVR personnel or agents recruited by these special services.
In Cyprus and other EU countries, Russian special services create IT companies from Russian emigrants and use them to infiltrate state institutions, introduce spy technologies, conduct cyber-attacks, and steal data with impunity. Several hundred IT-companies were relocated from Russia to Cyprus, including those that worked in the Russian Federation under the FSB license, there are no others. They continue to work in the interests of Russian security services while already in the EU.
Moscow has created and finances hundreds of NGOs and foundations engaged in «humanitarian aid», «cultural exchanges» or support for the Russian diaspora, which serve as a cover for its spies and saboteurs and exert the Kremlin’s desired influence on the governments and publics of Western countries.
The Russian diaspora abroad is used to gather intelligence, influence public opinion in their home countries, and find loyal contacts willing to be recruited and work in Russia’s interests.
Russian athletes, artists, actors, and producers are used for intelligence tasks and to establish useful connections for subsequent recruitment.
The FSB, SVR, and GRU continue to use scientific exchanges and student internships to influence the scientific environment, gather information, and steal new technologies and scientific developments.
The numerous and extensive foreign networks of agents of influence created by Russian intelligence services require constant control and coordination by their creators. To maintain the effectiveness of the recruited agents, it is necessary to conduct regular briefings, transfer tasks, and receive reports. However, direct meetings with each agent pose significant risks and require large staff resources and a great deal of time.
Intelligence supervisors supervise dozens of informants simultaneously, often interacting with agents from other units. Under such conditions, it becomes virtually impossible to meet with each agent individually. Direct contact is kept only with especially valuable agents and is only carried out in exceptional cases when strategic objectives or operational circumstances require it.
Back in the KGB, a simple but extremely effective method of coordinating and managing a large number of agents was developed — holding so-called «international conferences.» These events provide an opportunity to gather dozens and sometimes hundreds of agents in one place under the guise of discussing cultural, scientific, or legal issues.
These conferences are used for briefings, exchange of information and materials, and recruitment of new agents. Due to their official format, such meetings are not suspicious and allow intelligence agencies to effectively manage their network of agents.
As a rule, the stated topics of these conferences look absurd and are of no interest to anyone. However, this format allows intelligence agencies to bring their agents legally and openly without arousing any suspicion. Organizers pre-select participants of interest for recruitment and include them in the list of invitees. In between boring panel discussions, professional recruiters work with potential agents to establish contacts, conduct interviews, and assess their willingness to cooperate. And of course, dozens and hundreds of participants of the event quietly, without attracting attention, meet with their handlers from Russian intelligence, report on the work done, pass on the extracted information, and receive fees and new instructions. Genius.
Conferences provide ideal conditions for informal communication with officials, scientists, experts, business representatives, and military officers from Western countries. In such an environment, it is much easier to make contacts and obtain information that cannot be obtained under other circumstances.
Persons with access to classified data or strategic information are invited to such events. They are selected in advance and then, in the course of informal communication, recruitment attempts are made on an ideological, financial, or other basis. Contacts established at these events often become the basis for espionage or sabotage special operations.
«Organizers in civilian clothes» skillfully create at their conferences an atmosphere conducive to frank communication. In this process, not the least role is played by young Russian-speaking women of model appearance, who are always present at the «conferences,» often in an obscure status. According to eyewitnesses, these female participants are exclusively interested in presentations by officials, businessmen, and military officers from Western countries. After the speeches, they actively seek opportunities for personal communication with them, asking to find time for them to clarify «certain points» from their reports.
For obvious reasons, they are not interested in their compatriots.
To create an appearance of legitimacy and greater disguise, outsiders not connected with Russian intelligence are invited to such conferences. These participants serve as a kind of crowd, creating the impression of an ordinary event. In such an environment, it is easier for FSB, SVR, and GRU officers to establish contacts and gather information. For three decades after the collapse of the USSR, Russian intelligence services held dozens of «international conferences» every year in all EU countries.
After Russia’s large-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, accompanied by the imposition of large-scale sanctions and the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from the EU, the activities of Russian intelligence services in Europe became much more complicated. The number of «conferences» has sharply decreased.
However, Cyprus, which has long had a reputation as a country loyal to Moscow, remained the only EU member state that did not expel a single Russian «diplomat.» As a result, Russian intelligence services operating on the island have been able to maintain their position and continue to use the island as a base for coordinating and managing their agent networks in Europe.
On October 10, 2024, one of Limassol’s most prestigious hotels, the Four Seasons, hosted the tenth anniversary Best Legal conference. This is an annual event that has been held in Cyprus since 2014 under the auspices of the Cyprus Bar Association.
The annual conference is organized by the Vestnik Cyprus Group of Companies. The owner and head of the Vestnik Cyprus Group of Companies, as well as the Russian-language newspaper of the same name, is Natalia Kardash.
Kardash is closely connected to Russia and its intelligence services through her membership in many Moscow-created front organizations.
She is a member of the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots in Cyprus, a board member of the European Russian Alliance, a member of the Association of Russian Businessmen in Cyprus (a structure created by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service), co-founder and vice-chairman of the Association of Russian Speaking Residents of Cyprus «Horizon», a member of the Association of Cypriot-Russian Business Cooperation, a corresponding member of the International Academy of Social Sciences…
Since 2002, Kardash has been a member of the World Association of Russian Press (WARP), established in 1999. WARP’s tasks include recruiting journalists and publishers of the foreign Russian press and funding it. In 2016, at the WARP congress in Paris, Vestnik Cyprus received a diploma from Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev «for its great contribution to the preservation of the Russian language and culture, as well as to the consolidation of compatriots abroad.» The phrase «consolidation of compatriots» makes sense only as an «ideological consolidation of compatriots around the Russian authorities». In any other meaning this concept is nonsense.
Another source of funding for Kardash and her newspaper is the Fund for the Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad («Pravfond»). «Pravfond» was created in 2012 by decree of Vladimir Putin, its founders are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Federal Agency Rossotrudnichestvo. In 2023, Pravfond and its head Alexander Udaltsov came under EU sanctions for supporting the war in Ukraine.
«Pravfond» finances 34 consulting centers in 21 countries. As the Danish police found out thanks to leaked internal documents of the fund, these centers are used by Russian foreign intelligence for their purposes. The newspaper Herald of Cyprus is one of these centers.
Natalia Kardash has been organizing the annual international legal conference Best Legal, funded by Pravfond, in Limassol since 2014 under the auspices of the magazine Successful Business, which she owns. At the third conference in 2016, where more than one hundred participants from 17 countries were present, the speeches expressed gratitude to the Foundation for the Protection of the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad and its head Igor Panevkin. Igor Panevkin, judging by his official biography, is a special services officer under diplomatic cover. The next Best Legal conference in Limassol was held in October 2024.
On the website of the Russian World Foundation among the partner organizations of the Foundation in Cyprus is listed as «Publishing House Cyprus Advertiser Ltd» owned by Kardash and Nosonov. This undoubtedly means that the funding for the publishing house also came from the Russian World Foundation.
In 2021, Rossotrudnichestvo presented Natalia Kardash with its departmental award — the Honorary Badge of Rossotrudnichestvo «For Friendship and Cooperation». As stated in the official congratulation, «Publishing House «Vestnik Cyprus» is a permanent information sponsor of projects of the Russian House in Cyprus (RCSC Nicosia) and promotes the activities of Rossotrudnichestvo». This means that «Rossotrudnichestvo» is also a sponsor of «Herald of Cyprus».
In 2005, Natalia Kardash became one of the co-founders of the European Russian Alliance (ERA), a public organization uniting Russian public figures, journalists, and politicians from the European Union. It was the result of Moscow’s failed attempt to create a European Russian party. The party failed, but the resulting «movement» was led by Tatiana Zhdanok, a member of the European Parliament from the Latvian Russian Party. At the end of January 2024. At the end of January 2024, after an exposing publication by journalists of The Insider, the European Parliament began an investigation into the links between Latvian MEP Tatjana Zhdanok and the Russian security services. As it turned out, Zhdanok kept an active correspondence with FSB officers and, among other things, sent them reports on her activities. Moreover, Zhdanok has been working under the guidance of FSB supervisors since at least 2004. But back in 2005, the Estonian Internal Security Service stated in its public annual report that the European-Russian Alliance was nothing more than a cover for the activities of FSB agents, the creation of which was «prepared in St. Petersburg and presented as a triumph in a report directly to the director of the FSB». The Insider’s investigation confirmed this conclusion.
In March 2018, a meeting of members of the European Russian Alliance, chaired by Zhdanok, was held in Limassol, Cyprus. It was attended by representatives of France, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Great Britain, Switzerland, Latvia, Italy, Poland, and Germany. And all this crowd of Russian agents of influence and spies was received in the Presidential Palace, in the Parliament of the Republic of Cyprus, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Cyprus. This could only happen due to the connections of Kardash and the Russian embassy with the Cypriot government. An article in the Cyprus Herald, signed by Natalia Kardash, quotes the statement adopted at the meeting: «We call on the authorities of Western countries to abandon confrontation and the policy of Russophobia, to find a way to establish stable relations with Russia, based on mutual respect».
In 2005, the newspaper Herald of Cyprus was transformed into the campaign group Herald of Cyprus and Kardash became a member of the presidential journalist pool. She accompanied Cypriot presidents Tassos Papadopoulos, Demetris Christofias, and Nicos Anastasiades during their official visits. She was granted Cypriot citizenship in 2013. How Kardash’s handlers from the Russian embassy managed to introduce a Russian citizen with obvious ties to the intelligence services into the inner circle of the Cypriot presidents is the subject of a separate investigation.
Natalia Kardash is undoubtedly an agent of the Russian security services. She is involved as one of the key figures in a variety of operational activities carried out by the Russian security services in Cyprus and the EU as a whole.
As long as the Russian agents of influence retain the ability to hold international conferences in Cyprus, Moscow’s influence will only increase not only on the island but throughout the EU. Russia has turned Cyprus into a base for its intelligence services, which leads to the undermining of security and stability both on the island and in the EU as a whole.
Boris Demash, especially for Cyprus Daily News