The FSB has been given the power to inspect all new conscription papers and select the best recruits for itself as part of a rapid recruitment drive among Russia’s spy agencies.
In the past, mobilised men could enter the service only through border security and communications units controlled by the FSB. The new law will enable spymasters to siphon off the best conscripts for a range of duties including military intelligence activities in Ukraine.
As well as managing internal security, and in particular the security of the regime, the FSB is responsible for operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine.
Russia is thought to be undertaking a mass recruitment drive across all its security agencies.
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According to Ukrainian sources the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, has significantly expanded its special operations branch, known as Unit 29155, since the beginning of the invasion. It is estimated that the unit has grown from about 500 officers in 2022 to as many as 2,000.
Unit 29155 officers have been implicated in Russia’s most brazen overseas operations of the past decade, including the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury in 2018. Oleksandr Danylyuk, former adviser to Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service, said that as well as bolstering the recruitment drive, the new measure also provided protection to the FSB’s informants in Russia.
By having advanced access to conscription papers the service would be able to prevent the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Russians who are working with the intelligence agency on an informal basis from being mobilised, Danylyuk said. “The FSB has an enormous network of informants who are very important to them for keeping order within Russia. It needs to be able to keep these people in the positions they are in and not get sent to the front.
“It’s also an indicator of potential preparations for martial law in Russia during which the FSB would like to have its own military units to control the situation rather than give all of the power to the armed forces.”
