Paradoxically, this low-level corruption made Russia one of the most open societies in the world. Corruption was the friend of investigative journalism, and the enemy of government–military secrets.[...]
The attacks ignored a more interesting truth: that spying was no longer the monopoly of nation states. “Now it belongs to anyone who has the brains, the spunk and the technological ability,” Jonathan Eyal of the Royal United Services Institute, a security and defence thinktank, told the New York Times, adding, “We are witnessing a blurring of distinctions.” [...]
Suvorov likened his old organisation’s failings to a nasty, cancer-like illness. It was eating up Russia’s entire body politic. This disease had affected spying, technology and rocket production, he told me. It explained the abysmal roads, the dying villages. The country was literally disintegrating. Suvorov used the word “raspad”: collapse or breakdown. The situation was akin to the Titanic, he said with the rich looking to flee in a lifeboat.
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