We must hope the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB) is doing a decent job. But it seems that we – never mind Vladimir Vladimirovich – cannot rely on them these days. My only direct experience of Russian intelligence was interviewing Alexander Lebedev, the former KGB agent and the father of the ennobled newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, in London in the 1980s. He was dressed in a snappy jacket, rimless glasses and a leather tie. I asked him what he had been up to – dead drops, sneaking around after people etc? He agreed: “Absolutely. Also torturing people and… a few firing squads.” My face – I was a relatively inexperienced interviewer then – must have been a picture. There was a short pause before he laughed. It was the kind of very Russian joke which perhaps no longer seems so funny.
But back in Lebedev’s time, the KGB was indeed passing accurate information about UK politics to Moscow. If its successor the FSB was still, it would be reassuring Putin that the vividly anti-Russian rhetoric from cabinet ministers and others is not unconnected to a looming Tory leadership competition.
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