After Soviet Union’s breakup CIA hoped to paralyze Russian intelligence, says veteran

MOSCOW, April 25. /TASS/. In the wake of the Soviet Union’s breakup US secret services hoped that the Russian intelligence would be at least paralyzed, the former director of the foreign intelligence service SVR in 1996-2000, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, said when asked what was behind CIA Director Robert Gate’s statement made in 1992 there had been "little real change" in the activity of Russian special services following August 1991.

"I believe that the CIA was aiming to at least paralyze the Russian intelligence service, and at the most to downgrade our intelligence to the level of its counterparts in the former Warsaw Treaty countries by applying to the SVR the same package of measures that had been used in relation to East Germany’s Stasi [lustration, etc.]," Trubnikov said.

Amid tremendous external and internal pressures on Russia’s special services following August 1991 and, in particular, the breakup of the Soviet Union "the intelligence survived in the new situation largely owing to the civic courage and loyalty to the nation of its patriotic backbone, the correct understanding of the oath and of the essence of new Russia’s national interests, as well as the far-sighted policy of its new commander Yevgeny Primakov [the first SVR director in 1991-1996 - TASS] and the ‘all-weather’ capability and effectiveness of its operatives in the field," Trubnikov said.

"The role of intelligence is changing, of course, depending on the scale and nature of the new tasks the country’s political leadership sets to it," said Trubnikov, who is celebrating his 75th birthday on April 75.

"To me personally it is absolutely clear that the analytical component of intelligence activity will keep growing steadily," he said.