Espionage definition cold war8/5/2023 ![]() It raises questions, for instance, why 290 Russian diplomats will still be operating in neutral Austria even after the foreign ministry, following days of hesitation, expelled four diplomats. Since the 1980s Heisbourg said he had little doubt that the proportion of spies operating inside the Russian diplomatic service was higher than for most countries. We made it known to the Russians that if they did a tit for tat, they would get hit again many times bigger.” Heisbourg had a role in handling the case and recalled: “Even then, it was useful to keep some names back so we had an A list and a B list that we kept in reserve in case the Russians should take countervailing action. It was only following Vetrov’s arrest in Moscow that France, acting on the dossiers Vetrov provided, acted to expel 40 diplomats, two journalists and five commercial officials. Vetrov also provided a list of 250 intelligence officers stationed under legal cover in embassies around the world. He recalled that during the so-called Farewell affair in the 1980s a KGB defector, Vladimir Vetrov, gave almost 4,000 secret documents to the DST, the French internal secret service, showing how Russia had penetrated the west to steal its technology. If you don’t know who they are you have a problem.” Once you know of their existence, they become useful counter-intelligence. “Self-evidently, it is easier to keep track of the spy that you do know rather than the spy you don’t know. ![]() Heisbourg said there was an art to expulsions. “If you spend your time sending Twitter messages insulting the government of the host nation, if you follow the ‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy undertaken by Chinese diplomats, that can fall under that definition of making you persona non grata,” said Heisbourg. As well as spying this could also involve spreading disinformation on social media. Heisbourg insisted there was a clear and valid distinction between a diplomat and a spy, and those being expelled from Europe will not be chosen at random but because there is evidence they are in breach of the Vienna convention, the code that governs legitimate diplomacy. The current scale of the exodus of alleged Russian spies – probably the largest single set of such expulsions in history according to the distinguished former French diplomat François Heisbourg – may also raise questions about why the west came to indulge so many Russian “diplomats” working on European soil.īy Friday, among the EU member states, only Malta, Cyprus and Hungary had so far declined to send any Russian “diplomats” packing.
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