Russian military aircraft on display at the Kubinka military training ground in Moscow have recently garnered attention not only from enthusiasts, but also from international intelligence agencies. In a bold operation last year, a group of Ukrainian volunteers, working closely with their country’s intelligence service, came close to persuading three Russian aviators who were in the midst of bombing Ukraine to defect with their warplanes for $1 million each.
The effort proved unsuccessful, with strong evidence suggesting that most, if not all, of the pilots were found out by Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Nevertheless, the Ukrainian volunteers supposedly managed to gather valuable information about Russia’s air force through the pilot’s sharing of images, recordings, and details of their planes and air bases.
The plot bears striking resemblance to Cold War stories such as Viktor Belenko’s defection in 1976 with his MiG-25 from Russia’s far east to Japan. The efforts of the Ukrainian volunteers might not have been as successful as they had hoped, but the mission provided interesting insights into spying on modern warfare.
The operation also highlights the high stakes in the ongoing conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which flared up again earlier this year with what Ukraine claims is another Russian invasion. While espionage has been a mainstay of international relations since the Cold War, recent spycraft has leveraged new technologies like encryption and cryptocurrency to conduct operations remotely, as in the case of the Ukrainian volunteers.
