Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin announced on Sunday that he had communicated with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and the two of them agreed to have the right to call one another anytime to discuss matters of common concern, according to a report published by Reuters on Sunday. The latest communication is being seen as a bit of a breakthrough between the two agencies, who have long been believed to be adversaries.
A Turn in the US-Russia Intelligence Relations?
In an interview with Kremlin state television journalist Pavel Zarubin, Naryshkin, the chief of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said, “I had a phone call with my American counterpart and we kept for each other the right to call at any moment and discuss issues of interest to us,” as reported by Reuters.
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Latest Interaction Marks First Public Mention of Direct Contact Between CIA and SVR Chiefs
Naryshkin’s remarks are the first publicly reported mention of such direct contact between the CIA and SVR chiefs. The two agencies and their predecessors have had a long-standing competition, particularly since the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which prompted increased intelligence operations and public efforts to recruit agents, the report said.
Both the SVR and CIA have been behind some of the most famous espionage efforts conducted in modern world history. The SVR, for instance, was behind recruiting agents such as Julius Rosenberg, who reportedly gave the Soviets nuclear secrets, and Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames, both of whom were convicted of betraying American intelligence.
In a separate development, the Central Intelligence Agency, citing a “body of credible intelligence”, recently confirmed that the strikes by Washington had “severely damaged” Tehran’s key nuclear facilities and that it would take years to rebuild those structures.
An official statement by the CIA Director John Ratcliffe earlier this week read, “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
The statement came amid reports that the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites had caused minimal damage to the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.
