Putin Goes Full Bond Villain

A counterintelligence directorate created by former Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin and made famous by the James Bond novels of author and former British spy Ian Fleming has reportedly made a return to Russia.

SMERSH is a portmanteau of the Russian for "death to spies," or "smert shpionam." It was announced in 1943 as a move to target Nazi spy rings, traitors and foreign agents during the World War II, before it was disbanded in 1946.

Fleming portrayed the group as cold-blooded foes of James Bond. One of his characters was Rosa Klebb—an assassin handy with a flick-knife shoe, who was played by Austrian actress Lotte Lenya in the 1963 film version of From Russia with Love.

A former British diplomat has told Newsweek that the reported re-emergence of SMERSH was "inevitable" given Vladimir Putin's comments about cracking down on "traitors" since the start of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Not just a byword for the brutality of the Stalin era, SMERSH has been recreated in the present day to hunt down intelligence officers Moscow believes are targeting Russia, the British Ministry of Defence said on Monday.

In December, Andrey Gurulyov, a Russian parliament (Duma) member and former military commander, told state television channel Russia-1 that SMERSH had been revived in Ukrainian regions that Vladimir Putin declared as annexed, although they are only partially under the control of his forces.

Meanwhile, a video posted on Belgorod Telegram channel Fonar showed local resident Denis Boban apologizing for sharing video of Russian air defenses that had been operating on January 2 against a Ukrainian attack.

He was flanked by two men wearing fatigues with SMERSH uniform patches and described his "willingness to take responsibility," although it is not clear if he faces any criminal charges.

Belgorod has been the scene of Ukrainian airstrikes that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine, saying they have killed more than two dozen people. After the apology, the mayor of Belgorod, Valentin Demidov, later urged people not to share video or photos of militarily sensitive sites, calling any such move a "crime" and "treachery."

While The Times of London said that the two men with the SMERSH insignia could be from another counterintelligence unit using the term informally, or vigilantes, British defense officials referred to their appearance on social media.

The Ministry of Defence's update on Monday said it was unclear if reports of the group's re-emergence showed "any substantive new capabilities or role for Russia's counterintelligence, or whether it is "merely a re-badging."

"However, it provides another example of how the Russian authorities consciously couch the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the spirit of the Second World War, and their strong focus on the supposed infiltration of external threats into the country," the officials added.

John Foreman, a former British defense attaché to Moscow, said that if confirmed, the re-emergence of SMERSH "was inevitable since Putin railed about fifth columnists and traitors" just after the start of the war in Ukraine.

"He's using a real or imagined threat as another wedge issue to divide Russians. And of course the use of the SMERSH title, and its previous association with the excesses of Stalin...is both instantly understandable and deliberately frightening."

However, Foreman did not believe that the new incarnation of the group was about countering Western spies as it was in the Bond novels—"it's about cowing the Russians ahead of the elections and about the perceived internal security threat 'from Russians' which was the original purpose of SMERSH."

Newsweek contacted the Russian defense ministry by email for comment.

Update 1/9/24, 3:05 a.m. ET: This article was updated with comment from John Foreman.