In 2022, the intelligence services of the Russian Federation suffered the biggest losses in the USA and Europe since the Cold War.

This was reported by The Washington Post.

The last high-profile discovery of an agent who was an intermediary between a "mole" in the German foreign intelligence service and the Russian FSB was the arrest of Arthur Eller, which was based on evidence collected by the American FBI.

This was preceded by the detention of Russian agents in the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Poland and Slovenia.

The arrests were targeted strikes against Russian agents who remained in Europe after the mass expulsion of more than 400 Russian intelligence officers from Russian embassies across the continent last year. 

As noted in the publication, in 2022, when Western governments increased the supply of weapons to Ukraine and imposed economic sanctions against the Russian Federation, the security services of the United States and Europe waged a "shadow war" aimed at disabling Russian espionage networks.

And although Russian intelligence still retains considerable potential, it has suffered more losses over the past year than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

The scale of this campaign caught Russia by surprise and weakened its ability to conduct influence operations in Europe, maintain contacts with informants or provide the Kremlin with information on key issues.

A high-ranking representative of Western security services, quoted by the publication, emphasized that Western countries have shared the names of those they expelled and that no attempt by Russia to reintroduce spies has been successful.

It will be recalled that on January 21, German citizen Artur Eller was arrested at the Munich airport on suspicion of treason.

The suspect conspired with an employee of the intelligence service to transfer intelligence data to Russia.

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