Russian President Vladimir Putin. Photo / AP
Ukraine has claimed to have uncovered the identities of more than 600 Russian spies in what has been described as a significant blow to President Vladimir Putin's espionage efforts.
Officials in the war-torn country allege the unmasked individuals were carrying out "criminal" activity across Europe. The Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine released a slew of personal details of hundreds of alleged agents working for the FSB, which is described as the successor to the KGB.
Everything from passport numbers, their "registration address", mobile phone numbers and car licence plates were made public, with several of the doxxed individuals revealed to be based at the FSB's Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow.
Incredibly, some entries also include the alleged spies' home addresses.
Innocuous personal details, including cheesy Skype usernames and questionable personal behaviour, were also revealed. One leaked profile revealed an agent used the screen name "jamesbond007" and "DB9", and another on the list was described as a "heavy drinker" who "systematically violates traffic regulations".
"Every European should know their names!" Ukraine's official defence intelligence agency posted to social media, labelling Russia the "aggressor country in Europe".
The shady war of information between the two nations has regularly reared its head over the past few weeks, with Russia announcing it had seized a Ukrainian spy known as "The Baby" in Moscow.
"While trying to obtain data on military personnel participating in a special operation of the ministry of defence of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, the suspect was detained in the city of Moscow," the FSB said in a press release.
The arrest marked the first official detainment of an alleged Ukrainian spy since the beginning of the invasion.
Former FSB operative Jack Barsky described the role of a modern-day agent, saying war was "exactly what illegals were created for".
"They were created to not just [carry out] penetrations of government institutions and organisations, but also to be in place in case the diplomatic corps gets expelled," he said.
🦉 ГУР МО України здобуло список співробітників ФСБ росії, які беруть участь у злочинній діяльності країни-агресора на території Європи.
— Defence intelligence of Ukraine (@DI_Ukraine) March 28, 2022
🔥 Список із 620 співробітників ФСБ (П.І.Б., місце роботи, адреса реєстрації, паспортні дані): https://t.co/ussxYkTvlb pic.twitter.com/9fCGnuyyOo
In 2021, a former head of MI6 warned that only a fraction of Russia's operations in Europe have been exposed by Western intelligence.
"We see the extent of Russian aggressive intelligence activities across Europe," Sir John Sawers, who led MI6 from 2009 to 2014, said via the Telegraph.
"We probably only know 10 per cent of what they're doing. There will be a great deal that intelligence services do that we're simply not aware of."
Putin, a former KGB agent himself, is understood to have become increasingly paranoid about members of his inner circle, as well as potentially rogue Russian intelligence operatives.
It came as infamous hacker collective Anonymous announced it was preparing for a "huge" data dump that will "blow Russia away".
The group said it is uploading 1.22 terabytes of data, which will be available "within the next 1-2 weeks, latest".
Hacktivist efforts have ramped up since the beginning of the conflict in February, with Anonymous revealing it had successfully breached a huge number of printers "all over Russia".
The sneaky attack made printers produce multitudes of "anti-propaganda and tor installation instructions to all hacked devices". Tor, also known as The Onion Router, is a program used to access the dark web and communicate almost completely without traces online.
Anonymous reported being hit with a direct denial of service (DDoS) attack, which they believed came from Russia shortly after the publicised printer hack.
"Russia did try to DDoS one of our websites, but they did a s**t job couldn't even get over 10,000 requests in one day or more than 20 MB bandwidth," the group told the International Business Times.