The KGB Never Died: How Putin’s Old Spy Network Still Shapes Russia Today

 

Putin’s Spy State: How Former KGB Officers Still Run Russian Intelligence

      A lot of Americans thought the KGB disappeared when the Soviet Union fell apart. One day the hammer and sickle came down, the Cold War ended, and that was supposed to be the end of Moscow’s most feared spy agency. The name vanished, the flags changed, and the uniforms got updated. But the KGB itself never really went away. It just rebranded. Same people, same habits, same way of thinking.

     Today’s Russian intelligence services — the FSB, GRU, and SVR — are basically the KGB under new labels. They inherited the old files, the old spy tricks, and, most of all, the old culture. That culture is built on secrecy, lies, and playing the long game. It’s driven by the belief that the West, especially the United States, is always plotting against Russia. For a lot of former KGB officers, “retirement” didn’t mean walking away. It meant shifting roles. Many of them are still advising, influencing, and quietly helping run Russian intelligence operations today.

    No one represents this carryover from the old KGB world better than Vladimir Putin. Long before he became Russia’s strongman, Putin was a KGB officer working in East Germany. He watched the Soviet empire collapse from the inside, and he didn’t see it as a system that failed. He saw it as a national humiliation brought on by weakness and betrayal. That moment stuck with him, and it still shapes how he sees the world.

     For Putin, intelligence agencies aren’t just about protecting the country. They’re tools for holding power, keeping rivals in line, and pushing Russia’s interests abroad. You can see the old KGB playbook at work in today’s Russia: operations that can be denied, the use of proxies, nonstop disinformation, targeted killings, and long-term efforts to influence other countries. None of this is new or accidental. It’s classic Cold War tradecraft, updated for the internet age.

     Consider Sergei Ivanov, another former KGB officer who rose to become defense minister and later a senior Kremlin official. Or Nikolai Patrushev, who served as FSB director and remains one of Putin’s closest advisors. Patrushev has openly echoed KGB-era conspiracy thinking, blaming Western intelligence services for everything from domestic unrest to global economic instability. These men do not merely remember the KGB. They think like it.

     Then there’s the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, which has been tied to everything from cyberattacks to outright assassinations. Take the 2018 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK. It had all the classic KGB fingerprints on it. It was public, unmistakable, and meant to scare anyone else thinking about defecting. The message was simple and brutal: you can run, you can hide, but you’re never really out. In their world, betrayal is never forgiven, no matter how many years go by.

     This persistence of KGB thinking is a central theme in my spy thriller Mission of Vengeance. In the novel, CIA spymaster Corey Pearson tracks a pair of former KGB agents whose Cold War service alongside Putin never truly ended. Though officially retired, they continue operating in the shadows, leveraging old networks and old grudges to carry out modern attacks. The fiction reflects a reality intelligence professionals understand well: spies rarely stop being spies.

     What Mission of Vengeance plays up in fiction is something history backs up. Former Russian intelligence officers are still woven into the Kremlin’s inner circle, shaping decisions at the highest levels. You can see their fingerprints on Russia’s war in Ukraine, on cyber meddling in Western elections, and on efforts to push influence in places like the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America. It’s the same old Soviet strategy: test American influence around the edges while leaving just enough distance to deny direct involvement.

     The murder at the center of my spy thriller may be made up, but the idea behind it isn’t. The KGB didn’t disappear in 1991. It broke apart, rebranded, and adjusted to the times. Today, its former officers fill Russia’s political leadership, intelligence agencies, and major corporations. They carry with them a Cold War mindset shaped by confrontation and a deep, lasting distrust of the West.

     If you want to understand modern Russia, you have to understand this continuity. When Putin makes a move, he’s not acting just as a president. He’s acting like a former intelligence officer who was trained to expect enemies everywhere and to see compromise as surrender. The agency names may say FSB or GRU now, but the instincts driving them are pure KGB.

     In the world of spies and intelligence, the Cold War never really ended. It just went underground.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His work offers readers an insider’s glimpse into the world of espionage, inspired by the complexities and high-stakes realities of the intelligence community.