Russia remains biggest threat to Czechia’s security - counterintelligence agency

That’s according to an annual report Czechia’s Information Security Service (BIS) released on Thursday, Ukrinform saw.

“The year 2023 was extremely challenging in the security field and very turbulent in many ways. Unfortunately, Russia’s unacceptable brutal aggression against Ukraine continued, to which the democratic and free part of the world responded by supporting the country that is defending itself. As in previous years, Russia remained the biggest threat to the security of our country, as well as the whole of Europe and the world," BIS head Michal Kudelka concluded in 2023.

The report notes that, in addition to the usual conventional war against a neighboring country, Russia pursues constant hybrid attacks against Western democracies, including the Czech Republic. Russia is increasingly exploiting modern technology to attack stability, democracy, and freedom in countries it considers "hostile". The Kremlin’s main goal is to weaken support for Ukraine, undermine citizens' trust in their own government, contribute to public divisions by generating hostile propaganda across platforms, from so-called "news" sites, through mass influence in social networks, and to cyberattacks on critical infrastructure of targeted states.

Modern technologies, the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), pose a huge challenge to modern society and national security forces, the annual report states.

 “AI can be a good servant, but a very bad master. Control over it by a single state or private entity can have catastrophic consequences," the report says.

Security experts from the Czech Republic emphasize that Russia and China realize this all too well and are investing huge amounts of money in this area.

"It is vital for the Euro-Atlantic space to keep up with non-democratic regimes in this domain," the authors of the report emphasize.

Despite the forced change in the strategy of the Russian intelligence agencies, caused by the weakening of diplomatic missions in a number of countries, Czech experts state that classic intelligence operations were run last year throughout Europe. Moscow is trying to restore the previous number of its spies under diplomatic cover. BIS also warns about the risk for Czech citizens visiting Russia as local security agencies may try to use them against their own country, the Czech Republic. Russia has begun using communications platforms, especially Telegram, to recruit and handle its spies abroad.

As an example of the success of European counterintelligence, the exposure by the BIS in cooperation with other European agencies of the Voice of Europe Radio (in which former Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk was also involved - ed.) was cited. Russia's attempt to influence public opinion and elections to the European Parliament was a brutal interference in the sovereignty of European member states. The action taken against this intelligence platform was an "extraordinary success on the part the BIS", but in the meantime, Russia pursues similar activities in Europe.

BIS names China as another country posing a long-term threat.

"The fact that we do not currently feel a direct Chinese military threat targeting us, that we do not notice the threat of terrorism from China, and that we do not even fear mass illegal migration from that territory, does not mean that China represents no immediate and fundamental threat to us," the counterintelligence agency believes.

BIS noted the need to be aware of the manufacturer of electronics, such as mobile phones, smart watches or electric cars as adversary regimes collect sensitive data through mobile applications with no sophisticated spyware required.

As reported, relations between the Czech Republic and Russia deteriorated sharply in the spring of 2021 after counterintelligence found a connection between explosions at ammunition depots in 2014 and the efforts of GRU agents. After that, the countries reduced mutual diplomatic representation to a minimum, while the Kremlin put the Czech Republic in the list of "unfriendly countries".