New Delhi: In a very rare interview marking 101 years of the Russian foreign intelligence agency SVR—the Indian equivalent of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW)—its chief has said the interactions with Indian and Chinese counterparts have yielded "particular value."
In an interview with the state-owned media outlet, Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the secretive spy agency SVR, said: "Cooperation with the intelligence services of China and India, including in the format of trilateral meetings of their leaders, is of particular value."
The trilateral meeting format may have been in reference to the RIC platform. Starting off as a Russia-India-China platform to counterbalance Western hegemony, RIC holds periodic meetings at the foreign ministers’ level.
While India is seen as getting close to the US in the last few years, its relationship with China is in a turbulent phase with searing tension at the borders where the two Asian giants have deployed more than 1,00,000 soldiers besides heavy military equipment.
Interestingly, in a very far cry from the Cold War circumstances and situations, he spoke of the CIA—the US spy agency—as a 'partner'.
"Our partners include the US CIA, with which we continue to interact on the fight against international terrorism and exchange views on topical issues of our time."
The spy boss mentioned a recent meeting with CIA Director William J. Burns where the latter spoke of the "mutually beneficial cooperation based on generally accepted principles of partnership."
Naryshkin pointed out that SVR has the closest relations with the intelligence structures of the CIS and SCO countries.
“In the current difficult and contradictory times, there are many fronts in the fight against the ‘global evil’—terrorism, drug trafficking, cybercrime, illegal migration, etc. In this fight, we interact with our foreign partners,” he added.
SVR-RF (Sluzhba vneshney razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii) is the foreign intelligence agency of Russia. First set up in 1920 as the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, it slipped into its present avatar in December 1991.
SVR’s is mandated to handle intelligence and espionage activities outside Russia as well as to oversee anti-terrorist and intelligence-sharing arrangements with foreign spy agencies. SVR's findings and observations are reported to the Russian President.
The SVR head, however, refused to be drawn into revealing the name of the third spy agency who--along with the SVR and the CIA--he considered being the top three spy agencies in the world. In the past, he had spoken about it while leaving out the name of the third agency. In an evasive comment, Naryshkin said: "I do not want to offend anyone."
Asked if Russia still has ‘presence’ in the West in the mould of KGB spies Kim Philby and George Blake, he said cryptically: "The unwillingness (in the West and US) to put up with the arbitrariness of corporations, the venality of politicians, attacks on religious values, the deliberate collapse of society and the family, and, finally, the perverted interpretation of man is today an important incentive for representatives of the intellectual elite around the world to re-seek ties with Russia."
