The Practicalities of Arctic Spying

It has been a year, reader. 'Secure underground seclusion' has its pros, such as my continued being alive, and its cons, such as raging cabin fever and scurvy. I have come back above ground to resume my work.

The back-room power struggling continues. On the one side, Chief Russian spy Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, and the security forces ("Siloviki"): they're mysterious, they work in the shadows, both figuratively and literally. They bring down oil companies and pull bureaucratic strings. On the other side, the "Civiliki", technocrats and democrats, individuals with civilian backgrounds rather than KGB ones. With them is now-President Dmitry Medvedev. Where Putin's international approach tended to involve death threats and military dick-waving competitions, Medvedev's approach involves sitting down for hamburgers with US President Barack Obama.

I digress. Upon rejoining the above-ground world, I found that the main issue of contention now seems to be the Arctic. Delegations from Russia have been heading down for (ostensibly) any number of reasons, from cartography to science... but the most recent have been accompanied by a sizable and somewhat suspicious military presence.

Arctic spying, of course, is an entirely different kettle of spies: the snow provides camouflage, providing a spy covers his nose when prey is nearby. The winds are bitter and the weather is harsh. The practicalities of Arctic spying can be gruelling.

Above: Arctic Spying at its most intense. An estimate places the density of Russian spies in the Arctic at around 12 per km², far fewer than in warmer climes.

Death Threats

Chief Russian Spy Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has claimed he knows exactly who betrayed his spies in the USA and Cyprus... and has stated that their ends will come "lying in a ditch".

It beggars belief that a head of state can make such bladdy blatant death threats against individuals in other nations. We all remember what happened to former Russian spy Litvinenko, murdered in a British hospital for revealing murderous truths about Putin's conduct.

I await more news on the mysterious, unnamed "traitors" at whom Putin has taken aim. In the meantime, your beloved author will be spending some time hidden away in an underground bunker, on entirely unrelated business.

Recent Spy Flood

The recent arrest of eleven Russian Spies, ten in the USA and one in Cyprus, has brought the issue to the forefront of people's minds.

Or, rather, it should have done. However, the media fixation is not, as it should rightfully be, on the terrifying fact that our beloved NATO is suffering from an infestation. No, the obsession seems instead to be on one Russian spy in particular!

Anna Chapman, professional stooge, was one of many. And yet, by benefit of having breasts, she has captivated the British press! Eclipsed the ten other subversives! Captured the hearts and minds of sexually aroused, Daily Mail-reading James Bond fans!

"Femme Fatale", they call her, before delving needlessly into her private life, snuffling around for dirty little secrets. Picture the middle-aged Mail reporters, huddled over their PCs, trying to reconcile their sexualised Bond fantasies with real life, touching themselves under the desk before sending off their columns to the editor.

That said, don't get me wrong. Even the best of us can have our imaginations captured.

Spies Selling Secrets to Spies

Hidden away as always, masquerading as a non-story on the Guardian's rolling ticker today was a particularly interesting piece...

A recovering ex-spy by the name of Daniel Houghton has been caught selling shiny secrets to an unnamed foreign country's spy organisation.

Putting aside for a moment the horrible implications of the fact that a foreign power is ready and willing to purchase secrets about our intelligence services... could they really drum up no more than £2 million?! This is telling about the quality of the secrets the UK is producing nowadays. As with any industry, if we do not keep the quality of our secrets high, foreign interest will move abroad!

Back on track... though the country interested was unnamed in court, in this blog there will always be a cloud of suspicion around the spiritual homeland of the spies, Mother Russia. That is all. 

Ukraine Elects Half-Spy

Literally some people were intently following the recent Ukrainian general election. The disinterested people of the Ukraine were not among them. 

Chief Russian Spy Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, however, was. The political make-up of countries such as the Ukraine and Georgia interest the Russian spy-o-sphere no end. This is perhaps because the Russian three-step plan for world domination is as follows:

Ukraine & Georgia ===> ????? ===> Profit. 

...It is perhaps worrying, therefore, that the overall victor in this election has been Russian spy Viktor Yanukovych. 

The opposing candidate, former PM Yulia Tymoshenko had operated a pro-NATO foreign policy, writing frankly awesome articles about the danger of Russia. She had long been a strong figure of vocal resistance, in a country where people that don't like Russia often get their faces hurt.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister and Presidential Candidate Yulia Tymoshenko

In the aftermath of the election, many were left wondering how Yanukovych, an individual with convictions for Manslaughter, Robbery and Blatant Russian Stoogery, had managed to obtain the presidency. There were a platitude of reasons offered, including money. 

...The sad truth, of course, is that the average Ukrainian cares not about whether their country is allied with NATO or Mordor. They simply vote according to who's not in power already. As a writer-in-exile in the glorious United Kingdom, I can honestly say I'm glad to live in a country where simplistic voting like THAT doesn't occur!

~~ Ilyich.

Russian Representatives in NATO all Spies.

The Russian delegation in NATO, it has emerged, is staffed almost exclusively by spies. 

The predictable revelation came out after more than a decade of naive trust-- for more than ten years, NATO had been allowing Russian officials to roam free around their headquarters without a leash, just like normal politicians, and trusting them not to spy on anything.

The truth became too blindingly obvious to deny when Russian "officials" were caught hiding their badges and sneaking into meetings reserved for NATO members. Russia is not a NATO member, as Russia is to NATO what Mordor is to the Shire.

Apparently, during the Soviet era, only 27 Russian spies had been arrested for spying in the Brussels NATO HQ. Today, the number of spies infesting NATO is much higher, as Superspy Vladimir Putin has been outdoing his paranoid Soviet predecessors.

 

Back from the Gulag

Your author, Ilyich, has returned from his hellish period in the gulags. As a journalist committed to shining light on Russia's spy network, periods in the gulags are an occupational hazard.

But they will not deter me! I have the courage of fifty wolves!





Several spy revelations have made themselves known during my time away. First and foremost, in Bulgaria, nine more classified documents have disappeared from the Council of Ministers. The culprit is not known for sure... but it is highly suspicious that some of the stolen documents held information about Russia's use of the "energy card" as a political weapon (Vlad often uses his monopoly on energy to blackmail Europe). It seems a safe assumption that the documents have been squirrelled away by a russian agent, presumably so they may be spied on later.

A Very Secret Document

Meanwhile, over to the north-west in Sweden, a Russian spy has been "outed". Writer Jan Guillou is one of Sweden's best-known public figures... famous for her novels, in which secret agent Carl battles against Russian spies.

Ironically, it has turned out that Guillou was a Russian spy herself. She revealed casually in a tabloid interview that she spent her spare time passing reports to her Russian spy friends, after a hard day's work spying for Russia and drinking Russian standard Vodka.

===

EDIT: A final note, on UK Unionist and household name Jack Jones. I was uncharacteristically late in picking up on the fact that the man was a venerable Russian Spy, at least at the height of his influence. I pledge to be more paranoid in future.