Madrid/Washington —
They are known as “illegals” — spies who operate under the guise of normal jobs.
Since Russia lost many of its valuable spy assets when dozens of diplomats were expelled from Western countries after the invasion of Ukraine, these civilian agents have become essential.
Experts in Russian intelligence told VOA that this was the “renaissance of illegals,” with 90% of operations now carried out by these shadowy figures.
The August 1 hostage swap, in which American journalists and Russian rights activists were exchanged for an assassin and spies, exposed how some of these "illegals" operate.
Many manage to avoid detection by working in innocuous jobs that allow them access to events and people of interest to Moscow. The prisoner swap included supposed art dealers and a freelance journalist.
President Vladimir Putin welcomed back Russian couple Artem and Anna Dultsev, who posed as Argentinians and ran a tech start-up and gallery in Slovenia, and Spanish-Russian freelance reporter Pablo Gonzalez, also known as Pavel Rubtsov.
On the surface, Gonzalez worked as a reporter for media outlets that included DW and VOA, specializing in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. But in reality, according to the head of the British MI6 secret service, he was gathering information on Russian opposition groups and trying to destabilize Ukraine in the run up to Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Polish authorities detained Gonzalez in February 2022. Until August 1, he was held in a high-security jail on charges of spying for Russia — allegations he had denied.
Media watchdogs condemned the conditions in which Poland held Gonzalez, but footage of him being welcomed by Putin after the swap appeared to confirm his primary role was spy craft, not journalism.
Gonzalez himself gave VOA a cryptic answer to a request for an interview. Referring to an earlier VOA article about his release, Gonzalez said through his Spanish wife, Oihana Goiriena, “If there are no more speculations, then I don’t know what you want to talk about.”
Speaking perfect Russian and Spanish, Gonzalez forged a career in journalism after studying Slavic studies at the University of Barcelona. But despite his new life in the West, he retained much sympathy for his country of birth.
A source with knowledge of the Russian intelligence sector who did not want to be named told VOA that Gonzalez grew up in Spain’s Basque country, where sympathies for a regional independence movement are common — and, in left-wing circles, support for Putin is not unusual.
This meant many who met him did not question his pro-Russian leanings; far fewer suspected he secretly worked for Russian intelligence.
“This is a renaissance for illegals,” Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, an expert in subversive Russian and Soviet special services, told VOA from Kyiv.
“Historically, it was so difficult to travel abroad. [These spies] can travel, they can live, they can join governments, businesses,” said Danylyuk, who is an associate fellow of the London-based Royal United Services Institute, a defense think-tank.
“Some people are still not convinced that illegals are important, but it is 90% of all the [Russian intelligence] activity.”
Danylyuk said part of their value is that millions of Russians — and foreign-national Kremlin sympathizers — can travel freely without suspicion.
“They can travel to Silicon Valley and steal secrets, and they can recruit Westerners. Why would you need to use diplomats?” he said. “For some specific tasks, yes, but in fact for other operations you would use illegals, and you would have spymasters.”
Danylyuk said one purpose of illegals is to exert influence on the Western world by infiltrating radical protest groups or opposition organizations.
In 2016, Gonzalez engaged with leaders of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom — named after the Russian opposition politician assassinated in 2015 — where he became close with key members of the group.
Nemtsov’s daughter and co-founder of the foundation, Zhanna Nemtsova, said she was a target of Gonzalez's espionage.
“I was the first to tell Agentstvo about Pablo Gonzalez/Pavel Rubtsov in May 2023 after I had access to the case materials,” she wrote on the social media X platform on August 27. Agentstvo is an independent Russian media outlet.
Gonzalez collected detailed reports on his contacts with Nemtsova and the foundation, Agentstvo said.
Marc Marginedas, a correspondent for Spanish newspaper said despite the expulsions of Russian diplomats after the Ukraine invasion, the Russian intelligence service is like a small army.