His life is reminiscent of a Hollywood hero – perhaps the super spy Jason Bourne, played in the famous series by Matt Damon. Except that Jack Barsky did not serve in the CIA but in the KGB at the end of the Cold War.

Born in East Germany, he joined the KGB, where he received the most intensive training in the Russian service. He went through the same training program as President Putin and was tasked with infiltrating the US as one of the best trained agents in the field. In America, he joins organizations of the progressive left, collects information and integrates into American society, where he is engaged in espionage for 10 years (1978-1988).

In a conversation with K, Barsky outlines the thinking of the Russian leadership and the role of propaganda, and also puts together the mosaic of the invasion of Ukraine. The unknown world of espionage and its contemporary extensions are described in Barsky’s book Deep Cover: My Secret Life and the Tangled Connections of a KGB Spy in America.

– As a child, I had no idea that one day I would become an agent, a spy. I studied chemistry, I was good at it, and I was going to become a teacher. I had good grades, I was a party member, I was very popular. And then one day the KGB appeared. Even if I wanted to work for the KGB, I wouldn’t know how to do it, because there was no office with a KGB sign. The KGB was not in the phone book. So they recruited me.

Intelligence agencies review the records as they come in to find candidates who can be recruited. The CIA is different. You can contact the CIA and in general the Western intelligence services are more open. But the Stasi, the East German secret police and the KGB recruited candidates, and the reason they were able to dust off the files was because East Germany had a dossier of information on everyone. The Stasi collected information about everyone who lived in this state, and my file said that I was very good and smart.

– Absolute secrecy. I didn’t have to talk to anyone about what I was going to do. When I went to Berlin for an internship, I told everyone that I started working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs because I was going to become a diplomat, and it was very difficult for people to check this, simply because there were no telephones at that time.

So it was equally difficult for me to keep in touch and obviously there was no internet. So, #1, absolute secrecy, but from the moment I said yes, I really became a state secret. My identity became a state secret of the Soviet Union and, you know, I kept it for a very long time until I left the KGB.

Also, it wasn’t explicitly stated, but I was following orders. Even if I was given something to do, or something I didn’t like, or ordered senselessly, it was hard for me when I took it on. I never complained.

He is completely in love with himself and wants to create a legacy for the moment he is no more. And he doesn’t have many years left.

– It’s not a secret. He himself openly stated this, and two years ago an essay was published under his name. Whether he wrote it or not does not matter, but it is his opinion, and he has clearly stated that this is what he wants. His mission is to restore great Russia, the greatness of Russia, which Russia once was.

This is an illusion. Russia has never been a great state. 90% of the population of Russia were peasants. But anyway, that’s what he wants to do when people think he wants the Soviet Union back. It doesn’t make much sense for just one reason: communist ideology no longer plays a role. Now it is Russian nationalism. And when you talk about Great Russia, then these are all those Slavs who speak Russian or something similar to Russian, i.e. Polish. She thinks it’s his mission and obviously it takes a huge ego to say that I’m going to do it. So he’s completely in love with himself and wants to create a legacy for when he’s gone. And he doesn’t have many years left.

– As for preparing for sanctions, I think that Russia has done an excellent job, because sanctions do not affect its behavior in any way. There are many countries that are quite friendly to Russia that are not part of the Western world – China, Iran, North Korea. There are also many near-neutral countries that openly and freely trade with Russia, most notably India.

So Putin somehow knew he “had” the EU because they import so much oil and gas from Russia that he actually makes more money exporting oil and gas now than he did before the war.

On the other hand, the Russian special services have failed miserably, and I don’t understand how this is possible. Where they failed was in anticipating the fighting spirit of Ukraine. They should have known it. Ukrainians are extremely nationalistic, and Ukrainians and Russians have a history of conflict.

The worst measures introduced against Ukraine were introduced by Stalin in 1932-1933. Stalin tried to forcibly collectivize agriculture, as well as get rid of part of the peasants, settle them in cities and make them factory workers. So Stalin decided to force them – the KGB and several military men were sent for this. “Take all the grain, the entire harvest from the Ukrainian farmers and make them starve.” Along the way, about 4 million Ukrainians died of starvation.

There were cities where people roamed and were bony. Dead people lay in the streets, and no one could bury them, because the people who could still walk had no strength. There are cases when parents ate their children after their death. So if you as a nation have that memory, you absolutely hate the Russians.

There is something else that needs to be said. If you go to war against a country where you are fighting the entire population, you will not win. The United States discovered this in Vietnam. The Soviet Union discovered it in Afghanistan. In both cases, the invader was much stronger, so no matter how much land he conquered, every man, woman and child will always have to fight. So I really don’t understand why a reasonably competent intelligence agency didn’t know about this and didn’t inform Putin, or if they did, they ignored them and believed that they would be ground to powder.

“Look, I don’t believe Russian intelligence is funded as well as the KGB. I mean, Russia as a country is not very strong, and the Soviet Union was a bit stronger because most of its power came from the republics surrounding Russia.

Also, you can infer by understanding the methodology they use, such as crowdsourced espionage. I’m not saying they don’t have well trained agents, but they use a lot of amateurs. You know, if you give weight to this method, some amateurs get important information, but the crowd in a situation like Ukraine does not work very well.

Both countries must have many secret agents on the other side. So now it becomes a game of who can fool whom. If there are Ukrainians working with the GRU (Russian Main Intelligence Directorate), they can misinform them. Again, the Ukrainians have a lot more incentive in this situation, because they have always been worried about their big neighbor who has already invaded, so you would think that a lot of secret agents working for Russia and Ukraine would feed their handlers. bad info..

Nothing threatens the Moscow regime

“I just think he will continue what he is doing. He is trying to turn Ukraine into dust, and the question arises whether he will use nuclear weapons. I think the biggest danger was over, because when it became clear that it was not a walk in the park, then he had to use them.

– So is this his final move or is he planning to move to another region of the world?

– Firstly, he is now very tied up in Ukraine. He is making little progress, but even thinking about another military adventure would be suicidal. Of course, if it got into one of the Baltic countries, this would obviously cause a massive reaction from NATO.

As for Russia and China, they are strange neighbors because they have a common interest, and that is their hatred of the West. But that’s where it all ends. You know, China and Russia have historically had conflicts where they have a common border.
So China strongly supports Russia because it is doing its job and anything that weakens the West is good for China, but in the long run China wants something different, it is much bigger, much stronger, and if they ever -or there will be an alliance, it will be with Russia, it will be subject to China, and someone like Putin will not like it.

– No. Putin still enjoys the full support of most Russians. And if people think that the elections were rigged when he is elected again and again, then this is not so, because he always had the support of the Russians.

“But he fired some high-ranking officials.

Yes, he needs to find a scapegoat. That is, but internally, the fact that he can fire them suggests that he is still in power and has the support of the majority of Russians, and if I may tell you the reason for this, it is that he was 22 years old. to tell the Russian people that the West wants to weaken Russia, that NATO is expanding, which was indeed true, and that everything that goes wrong within Russia will be blamed on the United States and NATO. This is called brainwashing because the Russian people do not have good access to the other side of the truth.

So even now I will tell you how powerful this brainwashing is. As a German, I have always wondered how the German people bought into Hitler’s lies. Hitler had 12 years to brainwash the Germans. Brainwashing became fully effective after only three, four or five years.

So Hitler had 12 years to brainwash the smartest people in the world in his day, and today Putin had 22 years, and Russian people in general are not that educated. So draw your own conclusions. And I strongly believe in it.