Russia Changes Its Name, but Its Spies Remain

From the KGB legacy to Putin’s SVR, the continuity of Russian espionage reveals how much of the old Soviet apparatus survived the collapse of the USSR.

In our previous article, we referred to “Comrade Motherland,” not with the intention of presenting as new what is already a well-known story, but rather to connect events that took place sixty-six years ago with the present-day Russian Federation.
How did África de las Heras manage to operate in Uruguay during those twenty years in which she directed Communist infiltration in South America?
Certainly not by drawing attention to herself like the spies portrayed in movies.
She married the musician and writer Felisberto Hernández, which enabled her to integrate naturally into Uruguayan society.
She managed to go unnoticed in the midst of the Cold War, thereby providing great services to the Soviet Union.
When the USSR disappeared like a house of cards toppled by the wind, many of us thought it would naturally transition into a democratic republic.
But successive governments never declassified the KGB archives, and although they have removed many monuments erected by Communism, they carefully preserve its history.
A graphic example is the postage stamp issued in 2019 in tribute to KGB Colonel África de las Heras on the anniversary of her death.
And who proposed that commemoration? The SVR, the agency that continues the work of the now-invisible KGB.
A clear case of gattopardismo: changing something so that everything remains as it is.
The concept comes from The Leopard, Lampedusa’s novel in which the soldier Tancredi Falconeri justifies his support for Garibaldi by saying: “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come è, bisogna che tutto cambi.”
This term became a fundamental contribution to political science, describing the mechanism by which ruling classes introduce superficial changes in order to preserve the privileges of power.
In 2025, President Vladimir Putin, in a secret ceremony, awarded the Order of Courage to Anna and Artyom Dultsev, a pair of Russian spies arrested in Slovenia in 2022.
The spies were exchanged in August 2024, in what has been described as the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and the West since 1985.
The couple held Argentine citizenship and operated undercover for years.
The Uruguayan newspaper El Observador cites as its source information revealed by Agenstvo (The Agency) through its Telegram channel (@agentstvonews).
Agenstvo is an independent investigative journalism outlet particularly critical of the Kremlin.
The outlet, in turn, cites an interview published in Razvedchik (Spy), a magazine officially produced by none other than the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
Razvedchik publishes a restricted-circulation edition that includes SVR personnel, senior officials from the Ministry of Defense, and the most prominent figures in the Kremlin.
It is understood that the entire operation is conducted under the strictest security measures.
In December 2024, it published an extensive interview in which the Dultsevs spoke openly about their espionage activities.
So how did the news become public?
Did someone leak that secret information?
Apparently, the discovery was made in the course of Agenstvo journalists’ routine monitoring and investigative activities.
They managed to review the printed issue and obtain the information, which was later disseminated by various media outlets.
Agenstvo had been forced into exile by the Russian government.
That is only natural: its reporting was troubling the authorities.
And the repression of news dissemination intensified after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The process began by declaring journalists “foreign agents.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office then designated Agenstvo an “undesirable organization,” leaving it no alternative but to operate from abroad.
The Undesirable Organizations Law is the tool the Russian government uses to control the press.
The designation amounts to an absolute criminal prohibition.
Anyone who collaborates in any way with a sanctioned media outlet faces prison sentences of between four and six years.
Earlier, we said that “it is only natural.”
To complete the sentence, we would add: in a country where freedom of the press does not exist, it is only natural that democracy does not exist either.
In fact, Russia continues its expansionist policy and, consequently, continues exporting spies who carry out their opaque work in silence, with feline subtlety.

Continuity of the Soviet apparatus
Russian espionage in the West
Control of the press

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