How to spot Russian spies in NATO Militaries

Here is a cleaned up copy of my #KyivPost interview 31 July 2024

https://youtu.be/Iz54F4C8Bo0

Executive Summary:

Mr. Glen Grant, a retired British Army lieutenant colonel and defense expert, discussed identifying Russian moles in post-Soviet states. He emphasized that Russia has infiltrated Europe since 1917, often through patriotic individuals who either work hard or avoid contact. He noted that these agents delay reforms and undermine systems, as seen in Ukraine before the 2014 invasion. Glenn highlighted the lack of NCOs in Soviet militaries, leading to officers managing day-to-day tasks instead of strategic planning. He contrasted Soviet control with Western delegation, stressing the challenges of reforming post-Soviet militaries due to ingrained control and discipline practices.

Transcript:

Q: Glen, you're retired from the British Army, where you served as a lieutenant colonel, and you spent many years working with post socialist or post Soviet states, specifically with their militaries, and helping them to reform; you currently are defense expert at the Baltic security foundation. I wanted to ask you, when you're dealing with these former Soviet or former socialist states, how do you identify potential Russian moles or Russian spies who might be working within those defense structures?

A: The one thing that people don't probably grasp is that the whole of Eastern Europe, the whole of Europe actually has been deeply infiltrated much, much, much more than people realize. And you know, the odd little cell that they pick up here and there, I'm afraid, is just scratching the surface. And one of the things that, one of the things that people don't grasp is that Russia has been doing this since, since the start of communism. This is not a new thing. This is not didn't start in when the wall came down in 1980s, you know, they've been doing this since 1917, so they've been infiltrating steadily, whether it's at universities, in politics, and so we're on several generations of this, and there's a lot of people around who are working, either working for Russia in a paid sense, like some of the German and Austrian politicians, or they are Russian sympathizers.

Q: Now, how do you spot them?

A: Well, that's a that's a good question. I mean, I think one of the first things. There are certain things. One of the first of those is this, they are usually and often great patriots. And that should surprise a lot of people, because you'd think they wouldn't be. But no, they are. They're often, they come up, they come across as the great patriots. That often means that they are of not as Russian language speakers, but of the speakers of their own, their own nation, like in Latvia, Latvian speakers, and in Ukraine, Ukrainian speakers. And so you can't just say, well, he's a Russian speaker, so he works for Russia. He doesn't work like that. And you know some of actually the real patriots are often people who speak, who speak Russian. And we know this from the front line in Ukraine, where many, many, many of the Russian speakers are actually the hardest, hardest working supporters of the country you can find.

So that's one thing, is this, this great patriotism. Then there's a second thing. Of they are either, when they're dealing with people that you can go to these two extremes of, they're either extremely hard working, so you see that the hard work or the other way, and they won't touch you at all. And that depends to a large degree upon their level of confidence. And I was always liken this to a goldfish bowl. Of whether you're in a goldfish bowl looking out, or whether you're outside looking in. If you're very confident, you are outside looking in. You know that spy who's well supported is looking at the country like the goldfish bowl. So he can be confident and strong. If he's a weak person, he's inside the goldfish bowl looking out at everybody in the country and worried that if he says something the wrong thing, he'll be found out.

So you've got that, then there's this, what I call the ingratiating themselves with people. And you'll find that they're usually on the edge of power, and they get themselves, they work their way into the system. A lot of that is by telling people you know, you're the best Prime Minister we've ever had, you're the best defense attache we've ever had, you're the greatest Ambassador we've ever had. And they work their way in to where people think he's a really good man, and what comes from being a really good man? Well, trips to America, trips to Britain, courses in America and all these things. They get chosen. They get chosen and sent because they're the ones who are totally and utterly Pro. Look at the country. Now, of course, you can get this bit wrong. Sometimes people really are pro that go. Three. And they really are pro Western. So you've got to link that to the other, the other things.

And then there's the biggie. And the biggie is they are delayers. They are delayers of anything that is good. This is their big strength. And this is that, you know, they delay though the laws that we can't do it because of the law. We can't We can't do that this at the moment because we don't have enough support. We've already done this one, and it failed last time. We don't want to do it again, and so on. They find any excuse not to do what is right, what is needed for reform, because, of course, this is what Russia does not want. Russia doesn't want reform of a system that is actually, let's just say, a political based defense system. They don't want they want it to stay politically based, because it's, it's in, it's not usable. And they want to keep the defense forces not usable.

So you'll find that the people, especially when they're in the armed forces, will do their best to make sure that the system that is broken stays broken, and if, if something works, they will then go about breaking that so before, before Russia invaded, in 2014 you remember There was this period in Ukraine where the politicians who working for Russia spent their time absolutely breaking any part of the system, removing parts of the system, killing the military policing, killing military courts, killing the engineers, killing all sorts of things. And that was done deliberately by people whose job is to break a working system. So in the defense forces, you only got to look it's not that difficult.

Q: So after so many years of having worked with post socialist or post communist militaries in Eastern Europe, how well did your metric for identifying Russian roles work out for you?

A: when I worked in Bulgaria for a couple of years. Within a few months of being there, I was able to pinpoint who was actually in the system, deliberately designed to break things and to delay things. Okay, there were one or two I got wrong, but actually, when the Communist papers were open, the [czechos] papers were opened, I discovered that actually I was about eight out of 10, right,

because they were so obvious in their

in all these things. So you can actually start to spot these, these people.

We're in the West. We're naive. We are naive. We like people telling us we're the greatest ambassador or the greatest events attache. We like people coming alongside us and being supportive of our of the West and being supportive of things and when they are and when they're like this. We don't actually look too hard.

Now there is one other thing, which is, of course, reformers are people like myself, they can't attack us openly, so they don't, but what they do is they attack us through the people like through the embassies, through senior politicians who visit, so that they're very quick with the trouble with Glen is that he doesn't really understand what's going on in Ukraine or in Bulgaria or in Slovenia or in Latvia, he doesn't really understand it. And so they work to try to undermine you and to get you removed if possible.

And it, I didn't understand this at first, and then when I was working, when I was working in Estonia, this story came out that I'd been made personal non grata in Estonia because I was doing things I shouldn't be doing now. In fact, the story came from me having done a snap visit on a unit actually asked for by the chief of defense, who said, Glen, if I go there and look, then I'm never going to find anything, because they're all going to lie to me and and they'll hide and everything else. But if you go, you'll know what's going on. And I need to know, because I have worries about the commanding officer. So I did this visit, Judy wrote my report for the chief of defense, and it got back to the Finn the Finns actually said, we here, you've been made person non grata in Estonia. Fast forward like 10 years or eight years.

And my colleague and myself, Tom, Young, who grew in America, we were in another country. And someone said to Tom, I hear Glenn was made personally non grata in in Estonia. Now, hey, there is no physical way that that story could have actually got but without it being, you know, an under an underpinning of Russia taking that story, moving it sideways, and. Giving it to other people. So, okay, so another country, when it comes up in the third country, then Tom and I started laughing. But what, actually, what, of course, they hadn't realized, was that they were giving themselves away. Because from that moment, we knew that person was we knew that person was one of those who were linked to the Russian system, which then gave us this opportunity to then say, okay, who are their friends?

Q: Who are they actually looking at? That is interesting. And to just recap that, as you said, that typically, they're people who create delays?

A: They're people who are very ingratiating that you're the best ambassador, Defense Attache, then they operate in extremes. They're either extremely ingratiating or extremely ignoring you to not draw any attention, and ultimately, they do always find ways to undermine you and also to eat up your time with causes or things that will not be useful to actually create absolutely

the cocktail party person who just comes over and eats your time in that to make sure you don't talk to anybody. Sensible, yeah, and you've got to look at all of those things.

You've got to look at them as a package. You can't just take one because each one individually can be anybody, and can be perfectly normal people who are just as they are. But when you start putting them together as a package, and you see that someone comes out with nearly all of them, then you really have got to start saying, Okay, why? Why is it? The main thing is, why is this person delaying something which, 10 minutes ago, he was saying how important it is, and how we must do reforms, and how we must do this.

And then the next thing, he's actually in Ukrainian parliament voting against it. Hey, come on that, that that's a, that's a, you know, that should be a red rag. Red rag to a bull. And security services should be focusing on people like that, very, very quickly, especially on their bank accounts and and their phone records, which I think across the West we simply don't do enough of, because I think that a lot of our western security services and some have been infiltrated. We know that the Russians, we know that, you know, the Austrians, are dodgy as hell. Then there are others who I think are just simply too naive. They just don't understand the depth of evil of this system that we're dealing with, and how it gets in, how it works and gets in.

So you know, Estonians do? Estonians do and they work hard. But outside of Estonia, Finns do, of course, but in many ways it's easier in Finland, because, because the Finns are so such a tight society that it's a lot harder for anybody to get in there. But UK, where it's open, and America, where it is very open and welcoming to ex Russians and even letting them into the armed forces, then the hate, I don't think people look at it hard enough.

Q: So aside from the threat posed by spies, there's other problems in reforming post socialist or post Soviet military, and you've worked in a number of socialist or Soviet militaries before having worked with them. What sort of challenges do they face in the way that they are structured? What's interesting a socialist or a Soviet styled military versus a NATO style military? How is how do they function as organizations differently? And how are those reforms?

A: initial post Soviet structures did not have NCOs, you know, the working level of people. So basically, this has many ramifications. The first thing is, I mean, with an NCO, what was an NCO? Do? He runs the daily work? He's the chief clerk. He's the is the man who manages the shop floor. And if you haven't got that, then what it means is the boss, the officers are managing the shop floor. And so what? What do you teach them to manage the shop floor? Not to be officers, not to think ahead, not to think strategically, and not to not to question things, you just teach them to do the basics. But then the next, the follow on from that is that by only doing the management, you also your time is being eaten as a shop floor person, which means you don't learn. You don't have time to learn.

Then the next level of being an officer, the thinking part, the educational part, the intellectual part, there isn't any because you're just learning to be a you're learning to be a worker, a team worker. And that's the joy of good NCOs is that they free up the officer to think. They free up the officer to. To look, to look further ahead. And I always look at this very simply, is that the, you know, the the job of the first level of NCOs, the corporals is to is to look at today, the sergeant should be looking at this week. The sergeant majors should be looking at up to six months ahead, what we're going to do, how we prepare for the exercise in July or August, whatever?

And then the officers should be looking long term, managing the people, making sure the best ones are selected, and thinking about training people. What training does this man need to become a sergeant major and then a major afterwards, a captain and a major, so that you're looking at your soldiers and saying that boy can be an officer in 15 years time.

You don't get that in the Soviet Army, so you don't get this rolling development of people going then, then, then that breaks the system, because it means that people arrive at the rank of colonel, who basically are not fitted to do a Colonel's job.

Now you say, what's a Colonel's job? It's very simple, anything that should take someone up to two years to do, to deliver two years of work, to deliver complete change to the training system, moving the barracks, because we're in the old Soviet ones, and we need to move to new ones, and we've got to have project managers. Those are things that a colonel should be doing. Now, if you haven't had any training, what do you get? You get a colonel who's still a sergeant, so he thinks about small stuff. He's got no capacity to think about two years now, then he comes in.

Okay, if the Colonels are doing this, the tenant Colonels are managing the money, majors are managing operations. What does the general do? He chooses the right people. His job is to find, select and choose the people, the colonels and the and the first level generals who are going to make the whole system better in the next 20 years. In other words, you're choosing people for the army of tomorrow.

Now, in a Soviet system that doesn't work at all. There is no tomorrow. It's just managing today. Everybody's managing today. And so the system never develops. The system never grows. And you can see this in in many post Soviet countries that they still have not bitten this. The whole problem, the challenge of actually, of how to use NCOs properly.

Now Lithuania has so if you go for a briefing in Lithuania on intelligence or on their new vehicles, you're quite likely to get a Senior Sergeant giving you the briefing, and he is clearly professional. But in many other countries, the officers still have not let go of the day to day management. They're still to control.

Q: So would you say that control is a major element that distinguishes the east from the West in how they manage their militaries?

A: It's a difference between the West and the East in the Soviet and the post Soviet countries that stated that the seat the main themes. Two themes are control and discipline. If you go to a good western country, then it's, it's delegation, and we don't worry about discipline, because discipline takes care of itself. When you delegate, when you start giving soldiers officer type jobs, they haven't got time to do things wrong, you don't need to discipline them. When you engage them in education, and you engage their brains, they start coming to you with things like, you know, Boss, why are we doing it like this? Could we not do it like that? And so you actually end up with an army where all the brains work. Everybody's got a brain. All the brains work.

So you have this powerful organization. And you can see this if you look at some of the videos from from British Army and American army in, say, Afghanistan and Iraq. And you hear the soldiers talking, and it's really, really high quality stuff. You know, they're already moving themselves to bachelor's and master's degree level of thinking as soldiers and all the officers, the soldiers are doing that, and they're running things, and they don't expect that the officer to interfere. They expect the officer to do his job. Get ahead. Where are we going next? What's the next plan? What are the orders they don't want to be interfered with in management terms, because that's their job. There is a lovely story from one of the one

of the company commanders in the Falklands.

I gotta get it right, Philip Neem, this Philip Neem and Nigel name, there's two of them. Philip name in the fog. And they've been shooting, and they realize they shot at and they're all lying down, and they realize that there is no choice. They've got to get up and attack. This is in goose grin and and major neem starts to stand up, and the corporal next to it puts his hand on his shoulder, pushes him back down and says, No, sir, this is our business now. Now that's an NCO. He knows that the killing bit is his business. Don't lose the major. We need him for other stuff thinking. But that is that sort of difference.

Now you won't get that in the Soviet Army because it's control and discipline, and therefore it's just a top down booking. And one of the problems with reform in Eastern Europe is that there are still too many countries that have not broken out of that mold of of reform and discipline. Some half have. Some parts of some armies have. So if you go to Bulgaria, then the military police have broken out of that. And they are a much different organization to the rest of the army. Sometimes the Air Force and the Navy have broken out of it.

Often the navies, the navies, because the Navy work with NATO most. So nobody works, and they're always doing exercises, NATO exercises with NATO ships. So they develop the NATO style and the understanding a lot more. But when you've got this hardened control and discipline and power based thinking that I'm the general, I'm the best, you end up with some very sad things, like you can't tell the general because he's the best.

So if you tell him, he's going to get cross, because he's thinking that you're saying he's not good enough to be a general, which are bizarre ideas in Britain, it's the other way around. You know, the general says, when I was working on the stuff, Glen, I know nothing about this Quick Write me a quick, short paper. I've got to go and see the minister this afternoon at two o'clock, and I need to understand it before I talk to him. And that is quite normal. He knows you're the guy who knows he wants a quick paper. He'll read it over lunch while he's eating, and then he'll go to the general and sound like an expert, but that's the way, that's the way a Western Army works, and it is so different.

So bringing reform into that is extremely challenging, because nobody wants to change the system that they have. Nobody wants to lose power, nobody wants to actually do any work in many cases, and it's a lot easier as it is. So we just keep the same system, and then when you add Russia on top of that, who are deliberately, deliberately trying to keep an unreformed system, you got an extremely hard job, because you got two, two separate forces, both fighting against you as a reformer.

Q: I really appreciate those explanations. Thank you for joining us today.

A: Not at all. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Bye.

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