The inner workings of Russian state surveillance. Two former operatives share the secrets of their craft with Mediazona

Who gets to work in the Operational Search Bureau

Segrei

I was raised by a single mom working three jobs, so she wanted a stable job for me. I had an athletic childhood, eleven C’s in my high school diploma and a clean criminal record, which I think all helped to create an impression of a sporty, yet non-confrontational guy ready to follow orders. We thought about going to the University of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, we went there to talk to them, but there were only budget places at the Faculty of Economics — I wouldn’t have got in. But we left them our contacts. Then we got a call from the MIA for an interview, now I realise I had no understanding of the job I would have at the time.

In 2013 I left my hometown to apply to universities in St. Petersburg, got accepted to the seventh faculty. The faculties were, like, economics, operational activities, investigative, and then ours, the seventh. Half of the people in uni had no idea what the major was, we joked and said we were the K-9 unit, the dog-handlers. But in truth this stemmed from the KGB, where the seventh department was operational search.

My first year of university I lived in the barracks, just like in the army. Sometimes we would only get three hours of sleep due to relentless nightly checks, and some of the more understanding professors would let us take naps in the back rows of class. I would dye the lawn before Victory Day, and we got some time off during break if you painted the walls of your room. One time I mixed up two different shades of paint on different walls and then had to spend half the night fixing that in order to be let on the train in the morning. 

Even if I didn’t paint them I would probably still be allowed to go, but then I’d fail all my exams. That happened to three guys, one of them was very confrontational, the other had a drinking problem, plus he was heavily bullied for not being able to read an analog clock, he would get slapped across the face for that. It took only a month for another guy to realise something was up with the place, so he left.

From the third year onward we got some classes labelled ‘classified’, some of the tutors worked in the 90s, and they were pretty competent in their jobs, but lousy teachers. We were taught how to walk through the forest by former GRU special forces officers: you must walk through the forest and follow a person, and then out of nowhere a teacher appeared and said: you’re dead. So why didn’t they teach us how to navigate that?

Boris

I got there accidentally, in 2014 I was looking for a stable job, and found a job post on Headhunter, something along the lines of ‘hiring a police officer’. I was 24 at the time. I applied and got a call back the following day. It was a difficult time for me that year. They were telling me in vague terms that the job would be interesting.

At the psychological evaluation, I remember sitting there in the hall and overhearing someone talking in the room, like, do you know what a detective is? And everyone in the hall started googling it. Then there was a bootcamp centre, where we even got psychological tests explaining how to carry yourself when dealing with a criminal.

Wigs, fake mustaches, and IDs for a different name

Sergei

Например, вошел в подъезд, тебя там бабка или объект спрашивают: «Кто такой?». А ты отвечаешь: «Здрасьте, я из страховой». У некоторых был военкомат, а у меня — страховая.

This is how I got into the OS — the MIA Operational Search Bureau. The first month, while they’re still preparing documents for you, you work with a higher-up who’s fully responsible for your actions. I was coupled with a bizarre woman who yelled a lot. Then you get the docs — a fake passport and various other documents. I got a badge for an insurance company with someone else’s initials.

It works like this: you go in a residential building and an old lady — or your subject — asks who you are. And you’re like: I’m from the insurance company. Some people go the military draft office, I got insurance.

The legend is then constructed by our safety service: I was ‘assigned’ to the crisis management centre of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. I said that I am the first senior employee and we are developing evacuation plans and fire instructions... That is to say, I was lying through my teeth.

Your work day is as follows. In the evening, at around 6 to 8 pm, you find out the time you are expected to come in the next day. There are around 6 centres dotted around the city, they’re all disguised as different businesses, of course. You can find out in advance who issued the assignment for external observation,  for example, criminal investigation, economic crimes, or Centre E.

Then right before your shift you get a walkie-talkie with an earpiece and a button, which is then snaked around your arm under your shirt; a stealthy camera, some clothes to change into (at least three outfits). There are also some postiche items, like a fake moustache or a wig, but they’re so lousy in Petersburg that we barely use them. But sometimes we have to, the standards and documents call for it. Then we go to the senior detective for special cases, they are the ones actually leading the cases, and you get instructed.

They check our equipment and clothes, our knowledge of our backstory legend, tell us the number of the assignment, where it came from, and that’s when you understand what it will be. There’s the economic crimes unit, there’s threat-searching, which is more interesting: that’s when you get to banditry and grand theft auto. You get basic data: name, date of birth, address of registration, realestate, cars. The suspect’s crime is described in vague terms, like ‘they stole a vehicle’ or ‘suspected for extremism’. The plot can be like this: Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov is practising extremism and placing extremist symbols, that’s it, around you he leads a normal life.

Sometimes you can find things out in the process, for example, your senior detective got in touch with the public operative (the one that uses their real name), and sometimes it’s the other way round and they don’t want you to know anything about the subject.

This one time, we followed a woman, she lived downtown, drove a Porsche, and was under surveillance as an economic threat, these were the only facts we knew, very vague. On the second day we realised she was just visiting galleries, shops, picking up children, some bullshit. We came to the conclusion that she was the wife of a detective away on holiday, he just wanted to make sure she wasn’t cheating on him.

Boris

The first thing that surprised me was how much we could get away with: the road patrol, the police, none of them could do anything to us, we were untouchable. At first I didn’t believe it, but then I realised it’s true and thought to myself, wow, that’s crazy.

A typical day at the Operational Search Bureau

Sergei

When you get the assignment, you get the time and place of the subject. A surveillance shift is usually three to four cars, in each of those there are 3 different licence plates: the official ones, with which you come in and out, and the others you exchange along the way, in dark alleyways and backyards. In each car there is a driver and at least one person on-foot, and the shift supervisor. This is the point: to observe the subject and then write everything down in a notebook, take videos. For example, if a subject sees someone, that’s called a ‘link’, and we need to follow it to find out where the person will go. You find out, you call the supervisor, and he tells you to come back.

While you’re waiting for the subject, you’re scoping out the area: the building entrance, any gates, whether there are any cops, prosecutors, any other authorities that might get in the way. If we know the subject is going to link up with someone at 2 pm, we will get there as early as 11 am, 12 pm at max. But if we know they’re an active person, then we can come in even sooner: what if he messaged the person he’s meeting last minute to reschedule or change the place where they meet?

When the person leaves the building, I transmit a code phrase. Each city has its own code. In Petersburg, it’s all based on medical, hospital terms (it used to be from cargo transport, but someone figured it out). In Novgorod, it’s all numbers. So the subject is moving towards the gate, where he will be greeted by authorities, and I stay put, get in the car, where I get changed and eventually go back to surveillance. The subjects also get appropriate nicknames, for example, someone from Armenia could get the code name Black.

That’s how the day goes, until the supervisor says we have to get back to the unit and fill out paperwork, which is then delivered to public operatives, who were the ones assigning the case. It’s crucial that everything mentioned in the notes is photographed, the system works in such a way that if there isn’t a visual confirmation, it’s best not to even mention anything. Although we understand that if it is something important we can make up a good reason: it was too dark, too many people, the car got in the way of the scene.

Boris

The most important part was getting the visuals.  For example, you would get on the bus with a concealed camera and an objective to confirm visuals on the subject, but if he went to another address and we didn’t capture the visuals, that’s considered loss of crucial information. And according to the rules we wouldn’t write about it, even though we went from the home address to some other one.

But there were important parts we couldn’t leave out: for example, the person had a narcotics lab, he was coming to St. Petersburg from Moscow, driving a car which we put a tracker in. And it magically disappeared, and then reappeared near a dock, and his phone was located in a different region entirely. So we lost him twice, and we couldn’t not report that he disappeared and came back. I think he was detained after all, our mission was accomplished, but we messed up big time, and who knows what he could’ve done in that time we lost him.

In general we worked drug dealers and car thieves, although sometimes there were other cases of fraud, like people that would sell boxes full of tinsel instead of iPhones.

“If it’s a fail, we are to blame, if the criminal has been caught, it’s all thanks to the public operative”

Sergei

There was always a competition between the MIA and the FSB. In the beginning our department was seen as an elite subdivision of the MIA, but in reality the glamour and prestige lied in your influence, which was given to you by the docs, but when you leave work you leave it behind, too. If during the weekend surveillance is needed, the public detective will give the assignment, and you will spend all Sunday looking at the entrance of some building. They don’t need to do anything, we take care of it. If it’s a fail, we are to blame, if the criminal has been caught, it’s all thanks to the public operative, and all you get is a bonus, 5,000 rubles a month.

In my first year of work, our boss gave the pubs an ultimatum: if you want the detectives to work weekends, you must work with them. The weekends were the weekends, and I would go to lectures, or would ask to be put on the morning shift, so I could go to photography school in the evenings. Then we got a new boss, so it could be you would get a Thursday off, but then no days off all month. The work day is 10 to 11 hours, and the clock starts ticking once you actually get to the scene.

Audits and waiting for audits

Sergei

A good chunk of our work is just waiting. Nobody is allowed to drink on duty, and phones are supposedly strictly for maps, but of course everyone still plays games and surfs the web. Books aren’t recommended either, at least once a day we get checked, where the supervisor detective will come, or maybe the department chief. They can check if you know the legend, what docs you have, your clothing, how you’re all positioned. He can walk by the entrance where the subject lives, and you’re supposed to see him. If you don’t see him, you’re not looking closely enough. So I have to concentrate on work, but in reality I’m looking for my boss.

What to do while you wait in the car? Scope everything out, watch the scene. Okay, you’ve been watching the backyard for two hours, but what if it’s been eight? It looks very sus: some dudes standing around, looking every which way. And a ‘safety officer’ can come to your car and leave a box behind, and if you don’t see it in 15 minutes, he comes up to you and says you’ve just been blown up.

The pubs can also check us like this: for example, they got intel that the subject will be meeting with two people at once, but we are informed of only one. If we don’t report that there’s a third, then we lied. There’s no trust here.

“Hello, we’re from the military enlistment.” Operative setup

Sergei

Apart from our surveillance department we also have an operative setup department: this is when they would come to your door and be like “Hello, we’re from the military enlistment, looking for an escapee, as far as we know he lived somewhere here.” If someone is asking weird stuff about your neighbours, it’s much more likely they are looking for somebody else, not you.

For example, if we “brought” someone to a building entrance, that means it’s very likely that an operative setup is happening there. Sometimes they would also use it on us to check how honest we are with our supervisors and if we are sticking to the original story.

There have been situations where a person conducts a setup, but he studied at the university with the person who was targeted by the setup. They met in the hallway, and both knew what was going on. At work, the setup involves a standardised schedule and working with people, so it’s mostly women who work there.

Surveillance dress code

Sergei

There’s no strict guideline appearance-wise, but it’s advised to have inconspicuous clothing—I even received money for summer and winter jackets, which I bought at Uniqlo. You need a jacket you can roll in the mud in if you have to lie in the field with binoculars. Plus, it’s a safety issue: I don’t want to have just one jacket because I don’t want to be recognized and get beaten up. Once I was in an elevator with a target, a robber, and he said: “So you keep following us, what if I have a knife in my pocket?” I took note and asked not to be assigned to this task anymore.

It’s good to have different looks, stupid hats—put on an orange one, and they’ll remember it—change glasses, chanhe your walk, and definitely—shoes. I changed four to five looks per shift.

We had people of different appearances, all were Slavic. One woman was colloquially called ‘grandma’, and she was precious: a rough-looking lady around 55, she fit the average Russian woman profile—you wouldn’t look at her twice. There was a guy who was one metre ninety-eight centimetres tall, but they quickly had him working inside a vehicle, a minibus, which is often parked: someone parks it near the surveillance spot and leaves—while someone remains inside observing.

Regarding missions, they don’t really focus on appearance: if it’s a high-risk operation, they put the best people, regardless of appearance, although of course, if the employee is a boxer, he’s more likely to look like a cop. But there was one who was always neat, always had his hair done, a shirt—more like a research scientist. Another liked to tinker with his Volga, and his hands were always greasy, such a retro guy, he’d say, “These phones nowadays…”

Unfit, professional, and talented

Sergei

People there are not very motivated and capable anymore. One was considered very cool, but I think he was cool about ten years ago. Old school, he has great experience, but he could go to a club wearing fitted pants and an office shirt: “Hello, I am an operations police officer, but I won’t tell you that.”

Medical examination standards are very low, and one time, a guy stood next to a black Ford and couldn’t find it—that’s the kind of people that sometimes work there.

You need to take pictures, and sometimes I  had to explain what exposure or aperture was—because you need to know this to perform your work well when it’s dark.

The cooler guys, for example, would carry documents from the insurance company to blend in better, and they would change into sneakers. Good acting skills are essential, plus the ability to improvise.

For example, you follow a target to the last door in a building entrance, to get through you have to ring the bell. If they open—I’m from Avito regarding an ad, you have to invent things that won’t tie you to that place. I don’t need to make contact or infiltrate: I’m the eyes and ears, but in no case—the mouth.

Nowadays, surveillance work is helped by the fact that there are more cameras, but they are not everywhere. In St. Petersburg, you could find out through the Potok system where you lost the car you’re chasing —I know there’s a whole office with a wall of screens. Still, the technical support is still lacking: we didn’t pull faces from cameras. Plus, those installed in entrances, on Bluetooth, often glitch.

Failures, special signals, and uncheckables

Sergei

It’s considered essential not to blow the surveillance, better to let the target go temporarily, but we were still noticed, sometimes they would say—stop following us. In such cases, surveillance might be temporarily paused to let the target calm down.

They may set up surveillance so that the target notices it. We were surveilling a traffic cop who was trying to escape. One day we arrived at his house early in the morning, but he didn’t come out. Later, we saw a note on his car’s windshield saying, “Fucking tired of you following me, I quit my job two weeks ago” — apparently a hint that he had overstayed his position. We, of course, didn’t report this — we have been revealed. His car didn’t have a beacon then: the cop knew exactly where it would be attached — by a magnet under the bumper, but only where there was a metal part. You had to crawl under the car to place it — one of our colleagues was beaten up for this, noticed by men in the yard as he crawled under their neighbour’s car.

In the early days of the war, we were surveilling a deputy chief of the local police department; he behaved strangely,  blatantly driving on red lights—we reported it to security, and they responded, “Just keep him in sight, even if you’re exposed,” apparently they also wanted to warn him or something.

Margarita Yudina somehow noticed us, and I know who was surveilling her. She also managed to evade surveillance, perhaps not alone — someone helped her.

The toughest assignments are following seasoned criminals or cops. There was an incident with policemen from the Finnish train Station, a notorious place for bribes, and one task involved a drum — a dealer-snitch — who turned in buyers, the police would detain him, beat the fuck out of him in the car, extort money, and then release him.

They drove 20 minutes away from St. Petersburg, and we followed them to a turnoff to a private sector. The first car continued on, but from the second car at the turnoff, a pedestrian emerged: it’s a narrow road, and you have to go on foot, not by car, to see what they were doing: we didn’t know if they were going to their  grandmother’s house or for a stash.

A colleague saw them 50 metres from the house, confirmed the “link” to the address, and went back, but they followed him. Later, we saw on camera that they dragged him into the car — apparently, they thought he took the stash because he looked suspicious, a lone guy with a backpack in a private sector where the field begins just a couple of houses down. They started beating him and searching him, didn’t find drugs, but found a notebook where all their movements were recorded. They quickly figured it all out, then our senior officer came, and they went to the department to sort things out. In the end, they were put behind bars. ​

Another time, we were following the prosecutors, and all the phones around were tracked — later, we were temporarily forbidden to use them, they said: back in the eighties, we worked without phones. But we carried them despite the ban. And many people who controlled the handing over of personal phones turned a blind eye to this, because a phone can really help in work.

On the shift, work phones were officially allowed: the Internal Affairs guys bought a SIM card, installed an application, and blocked the ability to download anything. And they also put a call recording application on the work phone, which we couldn't switch off or delete.

But there were failures, simply because someone got too focused on their phone and lost the target. Overall, surveillance is a team effort, and they try to take care of employees so they don’t stand out.

Boris

We were surveilling a man who entered a yard in the Middle Prospect of Vasilievsky Island area. Another associate and I entered the yard, and three people ran up to us. One showed an MIA ID, asked what I was doing — I said, walking around, my fake passport had a registration nearby. But he said, your buddy already confessed that you’re cops. It turned out, the target had friends in the police, and he set us up under the police to find out who was watching him.

When the cops want to pull us over, the first car stops and the next one follows. We actually have a special light in the headlight, but I was dumbfounded at how stupid cops can be. You blink at them, they must know it all, and then you ask, “Did you see me blinking at you?” He replies: “How do I know, maybe the headlight’s broken?”

In addition to ID cards, we also have a vehicle authorization document, colloquially known as “uncheckable”. It’s a sealed envelope, where you can only see the color and model of the vehicle through a small window. You can offer to open it to a police officer, but then they would need to write a report.

Surveillance is sometimes noticed, but people often think they imagined it. When someone is detained, a surveillance officer might film it, and sometimes the detainee says, “Ah, I’ve seen you somewhere before.”

Surveillance quotas: “addresses” and “connections” that don’t exist

Sergei

Departments specialise in different tasks; ours mostly dealt with auto theft and similar crimes. There are assignments where you realise you’re catching actual criminals, and afterward, you might even feel proud: robbers, car thieves, drug traffickers.

Sometimes you monitor a grandmother—detectives think her criminal grandson might come to congratulate her on a holiday. Or we surveilled a woman who worked at a kindergarten, accused of fraud: her daughter was employed there as a cleaner but didn’t show up for work—probably the woman just cleaned the floors herself and collected the salary. Clearly, the detectives were just ticking boxes, you wonder how it will end—she might get fired or jailed.

After your shift, you describe every step: left the office, threw out the trash, etc.—this could be operationally significant information, but once they asked to describe the height of a dog’s withers, which blew our boss’s mind. You think:  “Are we zoologists or what?”

The way things are set up, we can’t really show much zeal; we just carry out tasks given by public detectives, and we get shuffled around. Sometimes, we work on a target for a week, but then have no clue what happened to them. It’s frustrating when people recognize someone they surveilled three years ago—apparently, the person was detained, and he bribed his way out. You don’t always get to witness the end of the stories; the arrest might not happen during your shift.

There’s a quota system: you need to establish a certain number of “addresses”—places the targets entered, and “connections”—people they interacted with, per month. During briefings, they say to make four “connections”—and it doesn’t matter if the target doesn’t leave the house. What we did: someone unrelated leaves the building, you follow them, establish where they live—there’s your “connection.” Then you write that you couldn’t establish a connection with the target because they stayed at home. This unrelated person ends up in the reports, and their data is checked.

Boris

There were tasks I didn’t want to sign off on, it even came to coercion—it was a complete sham. They wanted to catch a university employee taking bribes; we stood near the university. Another person came out, a police officer approached him, shoved an ID in his face, and demanded his phone and passport details. They then recorded him as a connection, even though the guy just came out of the university.

Such instructions would usually come from the top—they needed to find connections to the target, and these connections had to be “found”. Quotas had to be met. There were crowds of people, and when the shift supervisor was around, not a fool, I told him—it’s a complete sham, I don’t want to sign. He said, there’s nothing I can do—I was told, so I do it. The person just wanted to curry favour.

Sometimes it felt completely absurd. There was a breast doctor, supposedly he was falsifying analyses. We sat in the hospital corridor, and the security guard looked at us like we were idiots: men sitting in the gynaecology department. But the good assignments—those were full of adrenaline, action.

Three stories about absurdity and stupidity

Sergei

I’ve faced a reprimand and a charge of “incomplete official compliance”.

The non-compliance was due to my attempt to transfer to the press service—I submitted a report, but my boss didn’t pass it up the chain because he didn’t want me transferred. I had an agreement with the HR department, they reported it in the personnel files—I ended up revealing myself, though in truth, they transferred my boss somewhere to a warehouse.

The security services called me, playing good cop/bad cop: they said I had leaked state secrets, which could be a criminal offense. I understood they were just trying to scare me: if they really wanted to imprison me, the FSB would have spoken to me.

I received the reprimand during a dead-end assignment related to purchasing stolen goods. According to the scenario, there was a man in a booth buying stolen phones, but in reality, people just entered to buy a cheap phone for themselves. So we were watching this booth: a grandma walks by, we film her against the backdrop of the booth, follow her to her home—there’s your connection. Then our entire shift dispersed to establish addresses of these pseudo-connections, leaving me and the shift leader behind.

At that moment, a guy approached the tent. He was acting suspiciously, fidgeting, and started pulling out phone after phone from his jacket. We needed to see where he would go, but we couldn’t leave the booth unattended. The shift leader commanded: “Approach him with a police ID and conduct a document check.”

I approached him, introduced myself as from the main police department using a pseudonym, and he asked what was going on—I said we were searching for a fugitive fitting his description. He got nervous and wouldn’t hand over his passport, so I turned on my radio and said, “So you refuse to provide your documents?” The leader pulled up, opened the car door, and did something you should never do: he told the guy, “Get in the car, we’re going to the station.” The man refused, insisting on uniformed officers, and the leader called our department.

A uniformed officer arrived from the department to detain him, without a gun, seated the man in the car, and drove off—I think he dropped him off around the corner because he was from security service. After that, we agreed: if we work on thefts, we won’t make up false “connections.”

Our departments were already understaffed by about 15-20%, and we had other issues: we were following a man who was hiding drug precursors in the forest. Three cars were involved, then the driver of one announced he was turning back. “Turning back? We’re left with just two cars—that’s not enough!” It turned out, a drunk deputy chief wanted to go to the sauna.

I kept track of the target; he left the precursors. Lying in damp moss, I called the senior detective: “Should I watch the canisters or the man?” “The canisters.” I lay there for an hour and a half, then my shift replacement arrived, and I left. Later on the radio, it was reported that clients came for the canisters.

Yes, due to the lack of staff, they hardly fire anyone: one guy was drinking and calling in to say he wouldn’t come to work, so our deputy chief of the department came to persuade him to keep on working.

Why don't surveillance professionals believe in a digital GULAG

Sergei

Cameras and phones, all the equipment: they can’t see everything. For example, if I sit in a car and hand over money that I have obtained fraudulently, you need people to record it, and even a person cannot film everything. That’s why in the reports there is an addendum: according to an employee.

Boris

My opinion: tracking by phone and cameras does not give a complete picture. There was a person at a certain address, but what was he doing there? Maybe he was taking his son to school, or maybe he was meeting with his accomplices; it is very important to take a photo with the person involved in the case. So cameras and tracking are just ancillary things. We used cameras to track a person on the underground by connecting to the Safe City system, but you can’t track a person all over the underground either, it’s a big network, there may be repairs.

What to do if you suspect you’re being followed

Sergei

Your main aim is not to show that you figured it out: then they might change their methods, switch the whole team, or even “let you go” for a couple of days. Sometimes they deliberately make it obvious that they’re watching you—to calm you down for later. I’m telling you this from a former colleague. He has friends in the FSB, and he said that they had such a method. We in the MIA did not do this.

If someone follows me into my building entrance—out of professional experience—I’ll let them go ahead, I’ll get absorbed in my phone, but I won’t start a conversation.

On the street, you can carefully walk back and forth with your phone, windowshop for a bit. It would make sense to enter a bank to check if someone follows you in because banks involve money, money’s interesting, and you need to see if someone tries to sit in the booth next to you. A badly skilled operative will stand next to you and browse brochures; a skilled one will try to be next to you in line.

On public transport, it’s better to stand at the back and watch who is following the trolleybus, but this must be done cautiously because you are also visible from outside: it might be reported over the radio that the subject is behaving strangely.

When entering a building, it’s better to open the intercom with a key: if you dial an apartment number, you’re practically giving away the address. In the elevator, they’ll try to follow you to find out your floor—and they will ask first to avoid ending up on the same floor.

For surveillance of a building entrance, they might enter a café and claim there’s a thing going on, asking for cooperation—let our employee sit here. This also happens in buildings: I once sat with a concierge who kept trying to find out who I was working for. I couldn’t tell her—but she could see where I was looking on the monitor. Eventually, the whole building knew who we were surveilling.

Boris

For surveillance, pedestrian operatives should switch at least every half hour. On a crowded street, it doesn’t matter, but if it’s a small narrow street, operatives walk behind, but one on the opposite side of the street. This way, if the person turns at a crossroad and stops, you can check if they are smoking or talking, and then the others don’t need to turn immediately after him.

To avoid giving yourself away, try walking in squares, look at intersections to see who is around, fiddle with your phone, and change directions.

In a car, you can try driving slowly on a quiet street: if you drive at 30 kilometres per hour, the surveillance will eventually overtake you.

Centre E assignments, politics, and football fans

Sergei

I usually learned about the assignment the night before, and if it involved Centre E, I tried to take sick leave—almost always successfully, as another department usually specialised in their cases. A couple of times, I worked monitoring football fans. A colleague told me about how Polish fans had identified him in the metro: they spoke a similar language, and he overheard them saying something like, “Look, I’ll exit the car, and this guy will follow, and then I’ll get back in.”

Once, the assignment from Centre E was to track someone who was making weapons in a garage, but I also ducked out of that one. I had to call a doctor in the morning and drink cold water to make my throat red, and I said I had lowered my fever with paracetamol.

But once, I had to attend a protest at Gostiny Dvor. There you stand in the crowd, looking for someone unfurling a banner or shouting slogans, getting active. Your employee, a photographer, who had his arm broken at a polling station, was there too. Or they’d point out someone in a black hat and you could play dumb and say you didn’t see them.

That day, a woman around 50 started picketing, and I was told to monitor her: I rode with her on the bus until told to get off at a stop—another operative boarded the bus there, having been driven to the stop, since the bus route was known.

At the Solovetsky Stone, I was working: we had to catch someone laying flowers, take a photo, and find out where they lived.

We use concealed recording equipment, while those who film openly are likely from the Extremist centre. On average, from a rally, we needed to identify about 15 people—that means, determine full names that could be matched with a photograph.

There’s a story about someone wanting to hang a banner from a bridge over the Neva, and while the guys went to a store, the surveillance team stole their banner to prevent them from hanging it. I don’t know whose initiative it was—that was before my time.

Boris

During the 2018 World Cup, we monitored Zenit fans on extremism; there was also information that two guys from FBK planned to throw paint on the Zabivaka statue.

I went to watch football in the fan sector, and later they even sent me photos from the stadium camera: look, if you pull out a flare, we’ll spot you right away.

Life under cover

Sergei

If there’s an option not to show your work ID to the police—better not to show it. For example, we’d photograph a stash, and then the police would stop us in a car—it’s simpler to show the badge and tell them not to interfere with the work then. In administrative offices, the military recruitment, and insurance, they have your details; the police can either call our security service, who will confirm, or at the recruitment office, they can find out from the Ministry of Internal Affairs list—they’ll be told, yes, such individuals are listed.

In life, too, it’s necessary to stick to your cover: for example, my mother understood I worked in criminal police, but she tends not to pry too much. After starting work, I enrolled in a school of photography, and to my new acquaintances I would say I worked at the Emergency Services Centre.

I made a good friend there, and through him, another friend, a historian. They knew my girlfriend, whose brother had studied with me at university. We told everyone that we graduated from the Military Institute of Railway Troops and Military Communications, but according to my cover, I worked at the Emergency Services, and he was serving in a military unit.

Then I suggested that these two new friends rent an apartment together. They noticed an inconsistency: my girlfriend’s brother and I graduated from the same university but worked in different departments. They said, we know the history of our country, who the fillers are, and how legends are built—if you want to live with us, be honest and don’t beat around the bush. We got some vodka, pickles, and I told them straight up, I’m in surveillance. One confessed: if it had been the FSB, he would have stopped talking to me. Afterward, I’d come from work and tell stories: some made us laugh, others were fucking shocking.

I also told another childhood friend from my hometown, who also worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Over time, I realised that I was growing beyond him, while he bragged about how his traffic cops stopped him for speeding without a seatbelt, and he showed them his ID. A chasm was growing between us.

Boris

I have relatives in Ukraine, and I didn’t tell them what I did, but my parents knew. I didn’t tell my friends either—my cover was that I was an engineer. When they questioned me, I managed to deflect, but they weren’t especially curious.

When I resigned, I told my future wife about it—she was shocked, “Are you crazy?” Then I told my friends, some of them were really stunned. Also, because of work, I had to give up many social circles: stopped playing football with some, and in music, I lost a lot of ground. I understood well that my friends would not appreciate this job of mine.

How to quit surveillance

Sergei

It’s a more intelligent group than many in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and while there are attempts to make friends, they generally fail: people live on their job, but nobody loves it. There was a guy, I thought he was around forty, but he was only 28: he looked very worn out, people are kept there because of the stability of the paycheck.

Attitudes towards politics vary: for example, there was a somewhat coarse colleague who, if cut off in traffic, might spit on the driver’s windshield, but he recognized that working at rallies was nonsense, Navalny had a point, and Putin had overstayed his welcome, and he found it abnormal for police to beat demonstrators with batons.

Another colleague, with whom I worked at a protest, didn’t even understand the slogans people chanted, and he thought it was normal for them to be arrested. Once, on a business trip where we were dealing with counterfeit alcohol, and it was my birthday, I remember trying to convince a third colleague that beating people at a rally was not normal. He was outraged, asking why they even go to these protests if everything is fine under Putin.

Most have little beyond their work: one complained about being fed up, and I asked what he had done to change his life. He said he only had enough energy after work to play Xbox with his kid. Another, an outdated model of an operative, even resigned but later returned: he knew nothing else.

I started earning 62,000 rubles, then 65,000, with career prospects like: becoming a shift leader, then a detective in the Public Security Department. But as I began to form a new social circle in photo school, I found it utterly uninteresting to go drink beer with cops after work.

When the war started, work remained the same: I remember sitting in the car with a colleague, he was looking at a map of Ukraine on his phone and said he was picking out a cottage near Odessa. I was about to go on a vacation for a photography trip—it got cancelled, so I just wrote a resignation letter, stayed home for the rest of my vacation days, and resigned. Under the contract, I had to work five years to avoid a debt for university—these funds I borrowed from a friend and left Russia.

Boris

I was on sick leave. I was okay, but the doctor told me to stay on leave. Lot’s of free time. And I thought about going to Moscow for a Zenit match. They were playing CSKA. I cheekily called my boss to ask if I could go—he said, of course not. We have a form of secrecy, you have to write a report if you leave, and you can’t go anywhere on sick leave. I went anyway. And later, they showed me photographs from the stadium, and then it struck me: they are robots.

Later, there was this trip to the Leningrad region. And I really didn’t want to go! It was a week before my vacation. And oddly enough, we spent five days doing absolutely nothing: just sitting in a car watching YouTube. On the way back, I realised I wouldn’t return.

The management was stingy in their response to my resignation, but many guys praised me: everyone talks about wanting to resign, but I actually did it. Some leave quickly, while those who stay, usually stay until retirement, to the very end.

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev

Translator: Anna-Maria Tesfaye