Mark Hollingsworth - Agents of Influence: How the KGB Subverted Western Democracies

Also by Mark Hollingsworth

The Press and Political Dissent A Question of Censorship

Blacklist The Inside Story of Political Vetting (with Richard Norton-Taylor)

The Economic League The Silent McCarthyism (with Charles Tremayne)

MPs for Hire The Secret World of Political Lobbying

A Bit on the Side Politicians, Who Pays Them? (with Paul Halloran)

Thatchers Fortunes The Life and Times of Mark Thatcher (with Paul Halloran)

The Ultimate Spin Doctor The Life and Fast Times of Tim Bell

Defending the Realm Inside MI5 and the War on Terrorism (with Nick Fielding)

Saudi Babylon Torture, Corruption and Cover-Up Inside the House of Saud

Londongrad From Russia with Cash, The Inside Story of the Oligarchs (with Stewart Lansley)

Against the Odds President Goodluck Jonathan and the Threat of Boko Haram

For Lisa

No, said the priest, you dont need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. Depressing view, said K. The lie made into the rule of the world.

The Trial, Franz Kafka

Nothing is more dangerous to a state than a political police force and an intelligence service which goes off the deep end at the slightest sign of crisis.

Sir Basil Thomson, Director of Intelligence,
Home Office, 191921

When you chop wood, the splinters fly.

Czech proverb

What baseness would you not commit

To stamp out baseness?

If you could change the world

What would you be too good for?

Sink in the mire

Embrace the butcher but

Change the world

It needs it

The Measures Taken by Bertolt Brecht

I T IS MIDNIGHT ON 17 MARCH 1999, and the stern-faced newscaster on the Russian state TV channel, RTR, suddenly makes a dramatic announcement. The next item entitled Three in a Bed is not appropriate for viewers under the age of eighteen. The grainy black-and-white video depicts a middle-aged man frolicking on a bed with two naked, dark-haired younger women in a lavishly decorated flat in Moscows Polyanka Street. The man in the flickering video, although difficult to identify, appears to be Yuri Skuratov, Russias powerful prosecutor general.

The late-night broadcast was the culmination of an epic power struggle between Skuratov and the Kremlin. Six months earlier the prosecutor general had opened an investigation into allegations of serious wrongdoing by the daughter of President Yeltsin and two of his deputy prime ministers. In late 1998 Skuratov filed a lawsuit against the Yeltsin administration, alleging that one of its most senior officials had been paid an estimated $60 million in bribes to obtain lucrative construction contracts, including for renovations in the Kremlin.

As the evidence of corruption mounted, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russias most powerful intelligence agency, intervened and in January 1999 handed the video to the presidents chief of staff, Nikolay Bordyuzha, a former KGB officer. A few days later Skuratov was summoned to the Kremlin and the chief of staff played him the murky footage, implied that it could become public and asked him to resign. Even though he strongly suspected the video was a fake, the prosecutor agreed to step down.

But then Skuratov changed his mind, returned to work and decided to fight back, especially as it was unclear whether the naked man really was him. He knew that his resignation needed to be ratified by the Upper Chamber of Parliament. These were the days when the Russian parliament was an independent body and not simply an adjunct to the Kremlin. They asked the prosecutor to testify about corruption in Yeltsins inner circle.

The night before Skuratovs appearance before the Russian parliament, the infamous video was again broadcast on RTR. The prosecutor refused to resign and the Russian parliaments upper chamber supported him. And so RTR decided to show the tape yet again, this time on the programme hosted by the notorious and popular media hit man Sergei Dorenko, who announced that Skuratovs behaviour would make it harder for Russian parents to bring up their children patriotically. After all, this was the prosecutor general, not Mick Jagger who can run around the beach with a naked behind, shouted Dorenko.

The involvement of intelligence agents in the smear operation was revealed when a photograph was published of a high-ranking FSB officer delivering the video to the RTR offices in Moscow. Soon afterwards, on 7 April 1999, that mysterious FSB officer held a dramatic and unusual live press conference: The initial evaluation of the video tape indicates that it is genuine, said the spy, with no expression in his voice or face. The man who looked like Skuratov was indeed Skuratov. He must retire and there must be a more robust inquiry into this affair. That senior FSB officer was Vladimir Putin.

Putin then announced that Skuratov was under criminal investigation by his own office. The next day Yeltsin signed a decree suspending the prosecutor until the probe was complete. Skuratovs telephone lines were cut, his office sealed, his bodyguards replaced and he was banned from entering his former workplace and any government building.

The power struggle between Putin backed by the Kremlin and Skuratov continued for several months until the prosecutor reluctantly resigned. The involvement of the two young prostitutes unquestionably ended Skuratovs career but no one knew who paid them. One of the girls said that she and a colleague charged $500 per sex session and they had earned $50,000 over the previous eighteen months from entertaining the prosecutor.

Putins use of this crude Kompromat video resulted in his rise to power. As a result of Skuratovs demise, Putins main presidential rival Yevgeny Primakov was severely damaged, because he had been the prosecutors political patron. Primakov had been often and openly referred to by Yeltsin as his successor and now he was compromised by his association with the man in the sex video. Putin had protected Yeltsin, who paid him back handsomely by backing his presidential bid. And when he entered the Kremlin, Putin repaid his gratitude by granting all members of Yeltsins family immunity from criminal prosecution. But if it were not for the honey trap and the video, Putin may have never become president of Russia.

The smearing of Skuratov was a classic FSB tactic, inherited from its predecessor, the KGB. The video had been made nearly a year before being shown to the prosecutor and months before he launched the corruption investigation. It was stored away to be used at an opportune moment as blackmail, by threatening public disclosure. Moreover, it emerged that the prostitutes had been hired by a third party. And so the FSB Kompromat operation was akin to a trawler, gathering anything and everything in its path, just in case the netted fish produce something incriminating against a potential target. This cannot be dismissed as a one-off incident, for it encapsulated the most important secret weapon in the intelligence war against the West for the past hundred years and can be summed up by one Russian word zapachkat. It means to besmirch or make someone dirty and it has been a crucial component of advancing Russias interests and foreign policy right up until the war in Ukraine in 2022.