Kremlin revives Smersh, Stalin’s anti-spy unit made famous by James Bond

The feared Stalin counterintelligence organisation known as Smersh has made a comeback, according to a confessional video.

Denis Ivanovich Baban is flanked by men with the word “Smersh” printed on their flak jackets.

It is a word that evokes the ruthlessness and paranoia of a different age: Smersh, a portmanteau of the Russian smert shpionam, meaning “death to spies”, was the name of a counterintelligence directorate created by Joseph Stalin.

Formed to mop up Nazi spy rings targeting the Red Army in WWII, the brutal directorate was officially disbanded in 1946. But Smersh is making a return in a country paranoid about scheming western spies and seeking to protect itself from them.

In a confessional video posted online this week, a young Russian man in a tracksuit said he was prepared to accept any punishment for “wrongly and thoughtlessly” filming an air-defence system in the region of Belgorod, bordering Ukraine.

Standing on either side of the young man were two men in helmets, their backs turned to show the word “Smersh” printed on their flak jackets.

They could be operatives from another counterintelligence unit using the term informally, or vigilantes. But Russian politicians and bloggers say an official Smersh-style group is already active in Russian-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine and may have been expanded to Russia proper.

In Ian Fleming’s early novels, which introduced the group to the West, Smersh agents are cold-blooded and steadfast foes of James Bond. The most famous is perhaps assassin Rosa Klebb, with her flick-knife shoe.

Fleming had served as a naval intelligence officer, and drew on his experiences to create a version of Smersh in which its operatives duelled spies such as Bond abroad. In reality, the wartime group was focused with brutal efficiency on rooting out traitors and foreign agents within Soviet ranks.

Last month Andrei Gurulev, a member of a parliamentary defence committee, said: “We talked about Smersh and today created a directorate that will work in the same way in the new territories [Ukrainian regions annexed by Moscow].”

The United Russia party MP added that threats to the military’s rear in heartland Russia also needed to be addressed: railways might be attacked by saboteurs, and warships and submarines in the Far East were vulnerable.

Gurulev, a former lieutenant- general, referred to an explosion in November in a tunnel on the Baikal-Amur Mainline, the Russian railroad that links the trans-Siberian line to the Pacific, 4184km to the east. Media in Kyiv quoted sources in Ukrainian military intelligence claiming responsibility.

“A fight against saboteurs and spies is necessary across the whole country. War has come back to bite us across the entire territory of the Russian Federation,” Gurulev said. Captured agents should toil for life in remote penal colonies, he added.

The man confessing in the video named himself as Denis Ivanovich Baban, 22, and said he had filmed the air-defence system on January 2.

“I want to apologise to the whole Russian Federation and most importantly to the residents of Belgorod region,” he said. “I admit my guilt fully and am prepared to be punished for it in full.”

Vladimir Romanov, the Russian war blogger who posted the video, wrote on Telegram: “I didn’t want to be the first to write about it, but since the lads have appeared on camera – yes, Smersh has been systematically reborn.”

Romanov said that the agents had located Baban within two hours of his transgression. “He won’t do it again,” he added.

Whether Baban was punished has not been reported.

The Times