Russia revives Smersh, Stalin’s anti-spy unit made famous by James Bond
The feared counterintelligence organisation has made a comeback, according to a confessional video
It is a word that evokes the ruthlessness and paranoia of a different age: Smersh, a portmanteau of the Russian “smert shpionam”, meaning “death to spies”, was the name of a counterintelligence directorate created by Joseph Stalin.
Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings targeting the Red Army during the Second World War, the brutal directorate was officially disbanded in 1946.
Today, however, Smersh is making a return to a Russia paranoid about scheming western spies and looking to protect itself from them.
In a confessional video published in Russia yesterday, a young Russian man in a tracksuit said he was prepared to accept any punishment for “wrongly and thoughtlessly” filming an air-defence system in the region of Belgorod, bordering Ukraine.
Standing on either side
