Yesterday, Foreign Minister Tobias Billström (M) announced that Sweden is expelling five Russian diplomats. The five are suspected of being intelligence officers.
Deportation is one of the state’s strongest weapons against Russian intelligence. But there are risks.
– You need to make a balance. There can be advantages in knowing who are Russian intelligence personnel in Sweden so that you can keep track of them, because when they are expelled, they will be replaced by others over time and then there are new people that you may have to discover and train have an opinion about, says Tony Ingesson, researcher in intelligence analysis.
Likely with Russian retaliation
Tony Ingesson also believes that there will likely be retaliation from Russia.
– Then it is about the expulsion of Swedish personnel, which can disrupt our operations in Russia.
But there is another risk:
– If the Russians follow the trend we have seen in the last year, they may replace intelligence personnel who have diplomatic cover with illegals instead. There are people who act covertly and who do not have a diplomatic cover but take over these tasks, says Tony Ingesson and continues:
– It can be a bigger challenge to discover who they are and get a handle on who they are.
“Will not dismantle its intelligence activities”
It sounds a bit like if you expel five people, only five new ones will come?
– It is not certain that it will be exactly that balance, but of course Russia will not dismantle its intelligence activities, but will compensate in some way and try to rebuild what it has lost.
Are the deportations a blow to the air or do they have real consequences for Russian intelligence?
– It depends a little on what these five people have been doing. If they have been involved in a sensitive operation or recruitment, it can be disrupted, so of course there can be consequences, especially in the short term. At the same time, expulsions have a certain signaling value.
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