The Illegals by Shaun Walker: The Russian agent who couldn't get Irish people to shut up, and other spy stories
The Illegals: Russia's Most Audacious Spies and the Plot to Infiltrate the West
Author
:
Shaun Walker
ISBN-13
:
978-1788167772
Publisher
:
Profile Books
Guideline Price
:
£22
Spare a thought for Tim and Alex Foley. It was Tim's 20th birthday when, on June 27th, 2010, the
FBI
pushed their way into the family home in Cambridge,
Massachusetts
and snapped the cuffs on their parents, Don and Ann.
Turns out their parents, who had never even hinted it to their sons, were actually Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova,
KGB
'illegal' agents. The brothers found this hard to believe but the truth sunk in once their
Canadian
citizenship was stripped and they found themselves in
Moscow
, 'expected to start a new life in a country they had never previously set foot in'.
If this sounds like the plot of streaming spy caper
The Americans, then Shaun Walker's history of 'illegals' – as opposed to 'legal' intelligence officers stationed in embassies – that stretches all the way back to Lenin and Trotsky hiding in London from the Tsar, proves fact a lot more clandestine than fiction.
Once the Bolsheviks were in power, 'Moscow's illegals roamed Europe at will' long before the United States even had a dedicated foreign intelligence service. The adventures of Dmitri Bystrolyotov deserve a book on their own. He seduced secretaries in Nazi Germany, lived with Tuareg tribes, and 'at other times he took on the guise of a Yugoslav butcher, a jaundiced English lord, or a Norwegian herring salesman'.
READ MORE
Walker's thrilling book also serves as a potted history of communist Russia, taking in everything from the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico (by an illegal), Stalin ignoring warnings about Hitler's invasion, a near miss for Yugoslav leader Tito and the rise of Putin. Lest we think that Ireland was spared, there's also the case of Yuri Linov who was sent to Dublin to 'scout for interesting contacts, particularly Americans' in the mid-1960s.
[
Deep-cover Soviet spy in Ireland posed as travelling salesman and chess buff
Opens in new window
]
He paid his way by going door-to-door selling bath mats and television magnifying devices. 'Usually, spies have to find ways to coax important information from reluctant targets, but in Ireland Yuri had the opposite problem.' Apparently, he couldn't get people to shut up, although it's unclear if the gossip was of much use to the Kremlin.
As Walker points out, we had still not established diplomatic relations with the USSR at that point so this 'Austrian bath mat salesman' was in effect 'Moscow's top representative on Irish territory, even if nobody in Ireland knew it'.
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Perfect Storm by Thane Gustafson: A thorough study of the use and abuse of sanctions on Russia, and what could happen next
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Cafe-goers and shoppers had to revert to credit cards and cash. No longer could Russian-issued Visa and Mastercard cards be used for international payments or at stores and ATMs outside Russia. The Russian financial system had been fully integrated into the world of global telecommunications and international money: now, because of the war, the rouble is no longer fully convertible in global markets and global financial services such as Swift, essential for international financial transactions, have been withdrawn. Hundreds of western companies that supplied Russia have pulled out, including McDonald's , which created a sensation when its first store opened in Moscow on January 1st, 1990, (I was in the queue) and Starbucks, Carlsberg, Danone, Unilever and Ikea. READ MORE Today, however, Russia is rolling out its own Bluetooth-based contactless payment system, and city stores are well stocked with Apple products, and are even taking orders for Apple's new Vision Pro goggles, which will not be launched in the UK or Ireland until later this year. Initial fears among Russian consumers – that being turned into a pariah nation would mean their favourite western products in the supermarkets would all disappear – have long since been dispelled. Hundreds of western companies have stayed, including Mars , which makes Snicker bars – so popular that the conversion of people to western tastes is sometimes referred to as the Sneakerisation of Russia. McDonald's restaurants are still everywhere, under new management and rebranded as Vkusno i tochka, 'Tasty and that's it'. As sanctions piled up, a documentary made in Iran by popular YouTube host Alexey Pivovarov went viral: it showed Tehran stores bustling with sanctioned products and locally made imitations. It assured Russians that western sanctions could be busted, despite being on a scale never attempted before against so large a country, and one so integrated into the world. From the start, sanctioned products have flowed into Russia. Consumer items are relabelled and rerouted through intermediary countries such as China, India, Turkey and Georgia. Traders in this grey market use shell companies and pay in cryptocurrencies to bypass financial controls. The EU's sanctions envoy, David O'Sullivan , described by the author as 'one of Ireland's most respected statesmen', spends much of his time travelling to the Middle East, Central Asia and East Asia to ensure as far as possible that sanctions are implemented. 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The author's key proposition is that much of the sanctions regime is being circumvented, and the Russian economy is relatively stable, but if the sanctions are maintained and vigorously enforced, they will have increasingly severe long-term impacts on the Russian economy, causing its gradual degradation. This is because they have increased Russia's debt, reduced transparency and created new vulnerabilities. Russian banks are finding it harder to process foreign transactions and import-export settlements; Russian companies have lost access to western credit markets and can no longer use debt to finance investments; and half of Russia's foreign exchange reserves in foreign currencies have been blocked. [ Unfinished Empire: Russian Imperialism in Ukraine and the Near Abroad by Donnacha Ó Beacháin; and Putin's Sledgehammer by Candace Rondeaux Opens in new window ] Russian money-laundering through financial capitals such as London has also been severely curtailed, oligarchs' yachts have been seized or detained, and the assets of Russian banks, individuals and entities in the West have been frozen. In the words of Alexandra Prokopenko, a former adviser at the Russian Central Bank (not a former director as described in the book), 'Putin's military adventure in Ukraine and the sanctions have not made a breach in Russia's economic fortress, but they put a time bomb under its foundations'. Crucially, the reputation of Russia as a promising market, where foreign businesses were welcomed and risks could be managed, has been shattered. The seizure of assets of companies leaving Russia, such as Carlsberg, has only deepened the mistrust in Russia's market economy, which the author believes is already 'hobbled by a deeply corrupt state and leadership'. Gustafson writes from the perspective of 35 years studying and travelling in Russia and the former Soviet Union. He examines the impact of the perfect storm of war and sanctions in the context of Russia's three decades of opening to the world after the fall of communism in 1991. The first saw non-Russian-speaking consultants arrive to lecture Russians on how the market worked and the subsequent madness and mayhem of the Wild East; then, after the turn of the century, disposable incomes reaching unprecedented heights as oil prices soared and society stabilised; and the third was the start of sanctions after Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014, which has culminated in the final failure of Russia's opening to the West. Once again Russia is isolated from the West, but unlike during the cold war, the enemy is no longer the Soviet Union but Putinism, 'a perverted blend of vengeful Russian imperialism, kleptocracy and a distorted reading of history'. Perfect Storm is a thorough, informed study of the use and abuse of a scattershot economic weapon that falls somewhere between jaw-jaw and war-war. The author ends on an upbeat note: there could be a second reopening of Russia to the West after Putin, even if it faces a wall of mistrust, and continues to remodel itself on China, as the United States turns in upon itself. Let's hope he is right. Conor O'Clery is former Moscow Correspondent of The Irish Times Further Reading Punishing Putin: Inside the global economic war to bring down Russia by Stephanie Baker (HarperCollins, 2024): A colourful account by a Bloomberg journalist of how the United States and its allies embarked on a world-changing financial experiment, from fixing oil prices to seizing superyachts, to thwart Putin's war of aggression. Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict between Russia and the West (Hurst, 2025) by Maximilian Hess: A close look at Russia's response to western sanctions, and the ensuing skirmishes in London's courts, on Swiss trading desks and in boardrooms in New Delhi, as pipelines, mines, loans and crypto markets were weaponised. The Russia Sanctions by Christine Abely (Cambridge University Press, 2023): An expert on sanctions law examines how sanctions on Russia affect, in novel ways, global trading patterns, the world financial system and foreign policy. 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