A Critical Examination of Putin, Russian Intelligence, and the West’s Strategic Blind Spot
By June 2026, retired CIA operations officer and former Chief of Station Sean Wiswesser has emerged as one of the more prominent public voices arguing that the West fundamentally misunderstands the nature of modern Russia. His central thesis is neither novel nor sensational. Rather, it is rooted in a career spent studying and operating against Soviet and Russian intelligence services.
His argument can be distilled into a single proposition:
Russia under Vladimir Putin is not merely an authoritarian state that employs intelligence services. It is an intelligence state that employs a government.
That distinction matters.
It changes how one interprets Russian behavior in Ukraine, election interference, cyber operations, sabotage campaigns, assassinations, influence operations, and diplomatic engagement. It also challenges one of the foundational assumptions that guided Western policy toward Moscow after the Cold War: namely, that economic integration and globalization would gradually transform Russia into a more conventional European state.
Who Is Sean Wiswesser?
Wiswesser served approximately three decades in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, specializing in Russian and denied-area operations. He held overseas assignments, served as Chief of Station, and spent much of his career studying and confronting Russian intelligence tradecraft. His recent book, Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War, examines how Moscow employs espionage, influence operations, sabotage, cyber capabilities, and covert action as integrated instruments of state power.
You can find his work on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0FRZKV73V
Unlike many commentators who approach Russia through the lens of diplomacy or military affairs, Wiswesser approaches the problem through the perspective of clandestine services.
That perspective leads him to a conclusion many Western leaders have historically resisted:
To understand Russia, one must first understand its intelligence services.
Putin: The KGB Never Ended
One of Wiswesser’s most important assertions is that Vladimir Putin never ceased being a KGB officer.
Many Western policymakers viewed Putin’s intelligence background as merely one aspect of his biography.
Wiswesser views it as the central organizing principle of his worldview.
Putin emerged from the KGB during the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unlike many Russian reformers of the 1990s, he did not see the Soviet collapse as liberation.
He saw it as catastrophe.
His often-quoted characterization of the Soviet Union’s dissolution as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century” reveals much about his strategic thinking.
The implication is profound:
Putin does not view Russia’s post-Cold War borders as legitimate historical outcomes.
He views them as temporary conditions to be corrected.
Wiswesser argues that intelligence services became the primary instrument through which Putin sought to reverse that strategic defeat.
Russia as an Intelligence State
This is perhaps Wiswesser’s most important contribution to the debate.
Many analysts describe Russia as an authoritarian state.
Wiswesser goes further.
He describes it as a modern intelligence state—a system where intelligence and security services penetrate virtually every institution of power.
This concept is similar to what political scientists have termed a “counterintelligence state” or “securocracy,” where security services become the central organizing mechanism of governance rather than merely instruments of governance.
In Putin’s Russia:
Former intelligence officers dominate senior government positions.
Intelligence services possess extraordinary political influence.
Domestic surveillance is extensive.
Opposition is treated as a security threat rather than a political competitor.
Foreign policy often reflects intelligence priorities.
Seen through this lens, events that appear disconnected begin to form a coherent pattern.
Cyberattacks.
Assassinations.
Election interference.
Disinformation campaigns.
Sabotage.
Political influence operations.
They are not separate activities.
They are manifestations of a single strategic culture.
The Gray War Doctrine
Wiswesser frequently argues that the West continues to think in terms of peace and war while Russia operates in the space between them.
Russia’s preferred domain is what many NATO planners now call:
Gray-zone conflict
Hybrid warfare
Political warfare
Active measures
The objective is not necessarily territorial conquest.
Instead, it is to weaken adversaries from within.
This concept is hardly new.
The Soviet Union practiced active measures throughout the Cold War.
The difference is scale and technology.
Today’s Russian intelligence services can combine:
Traditional espionage
Cyber operations
Social media manipulation
Financial influence networks
Criminal organizations
Political proxies
Information warfare
into a single coordinated campaign.
The target is often not military capability.
The target is public confidence.
Information Warfare as the Main Effort
Here Wiswesser makes an argument that many intelligence professionals increasingly share:
The greatest Russian threat may not be military.
It may be informational.
He argues that Russia’s objective is not necessarily to elect specific politicians.
Instead, Moscow seeks to erode confidence in democratic institutions themselves.
This distinction is often misunderstood.
The objective is not: “Vote for Candidate A.”
The objective is: “Believe nobody.”
Trust no institution.
Trust no election.
Trust no media source.
Trust no government.
Trust no expert.
Trust no ally.
A society consumed by mutual distrust becomes easier to manipulate and harder to govern.
That objective aligns closely with longstanding Soviet and Russian active-measures doctrine.
The Recklessness Problem
One of Wiswesser’s more alarming observations concerns what he describes as the increasing recklessness of Russian intelligence operations.
Historically, Soviet intelligence was often characterized by patience, discipline, and professional tradecraft.
Modern Russian operations sometimes appear far less restrained.
Examples frequently cited include:
The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko
The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal
Sabotage efforts across Europe
Assassination plots against dissidents
Proxy operations using criminal networks
Wiswesser suggests that intelligence services increasingly compete for Kremlin approval.
In such an environment, officers may propose riskier operations to demonstrate effectiveness.
The result is a pattern of increasingly aggressive covert activity.
Ukraine Changed Everything
Wiswesser views the invasion of Ukraine as a watershed event.
Not merely because of military consequences.
But because it transformed the intelligence battlefield.
European governments expelled hundreds of Russian intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover.
This severely disrupted Russian intelligence networks.
The response, according to Wiswesser, has been adaptation.
Russia increasingly relies upon:
Criminal intermediaries
Non-official operatives
Online recruitment
Cryptocurrency payments
Proxy actors
This evolution makes attribution harder and deterrence more difficult.
The intelligence war has become decentralized.
Where Wiswesser Is Most Convincing
Several of his arguments deserve serious attention.
1. Russia’s Intelligence Services Are Central to Understanding the Kremlin
This is difficult to dispute.
The biographies of Russia’s political elite reveal extensive overlap with former security-service personnel.
The siloviki remain among the most influential factions in Russian politics.
2. The West Underestimated Russian Political Warfare
The post-Cold War period was characterized by optimism.
Many Western governments assumed economic integration would reduce geopolitical rivalry.
Instead, Moscow viewed that period as an opportunity to rebuild.
3. Information Operations Have Strategic Impact
The evidence from cyber campaigns, troll farms, disinformation efforts, and influence operations demonstrates that information warfare has become a core component of state competition.
Wiswesser is correct to argue that many democratic societies remain poorly prepared for this challenge.
Where Caution Is Required
A professional intelligence assessment must also recognize limitations.
Wiswesser’s framework emphasizing intelligence factors deserves a glance at the others, too.
Not every Russian action is driven by intelligence services.
Russia is simultaneously:
A military power
An energy power
A nationalist state
A declining demographic power
A commodity exporter
A nuclear superpower
Intelligence services are extraordinarily important.
But they are not always the sole drivers of Russian behavior.
Describing Putin as an existential threat to democracy is a strategic judgment: Most European governments quietly agree with that characterization.
So do I.
Others would frame the threat differently.
The Larger Question
The most valuable aspect of Wiswesser’s work is not whether every conclusion is correct.
It is the question he forces policymakers to confront:
What if Russia is not behaving irrationally at all?
What if Moscow is executing a coherent long-term strategy rooted in Soviet and Russian intelligence traditions?
What if cyber attacks, election interference, sabotage, espionage, influence campaigns, assassinations, and military coercion are not separate phenomena?
What if they are components of a single campaign?
That possibility deserves serious consideration.
Final Assessment
Sean Wiswesser belongs to a long tradition of CIA officers who spent careers focused on the Soviet and Russian target. Like earlier generations of Russian specialists, he argues that Western leaders repeatedly underestimate the importance of intelligence services in shaping Kremlin behavior.
His central warning should not be dismissed:
Putin’s Russia is best understood not as a conventional nation-state that occasionally conducts espionage, but as a security state in which intelligence services sit at the center of political power.
If that assessment is correct, then Russia’s cyber campaigns, influence operations, covert action programs, sabotage efforts, and intelligence collection activities are not peripheral concerns.
They are the main effort.
And the contest between Russia and the West is not merely being fought in trenches in Ukraine, or through sanctions and diplomacy.
It is being fought daily in the shadows—through information, perception, influence, and intelligence.
That is a contest the West has historically won only when it first recognized that it was already underway.
You can find his work on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B0FRZKV73V
Thank you Ken for your support to my book and its mission!