Russia claims Western intelligence agencies installing spyware on Kremlin officials’ phones

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has allegedly uncovered a “large-scale scheme” by Western intelligence agencies to install spyware on the phones of high-ranking officials, state media agency TASS reported on Tuesday.

In a press video published by the FSB’s public relations office, an anonymous spokesperson claimed that the spyware is used to “extract existing data, wiretap phone conversations, and conduct covert audio and video monitoring of the surroundings near mobile devices”.

The scheme is a “multi-level operation”, the anonymous man added, claiming that it would require the coordination of several Western governments. The FSB has opened a criminal investigation to identify the perpetrators, channels, and specific victims, as well as the scale of the alleged data breaches.

The FSB provided no evidence for its allegations, instead publishing various video shots of the London and San Francisco offices of Cloudflare and Fastly, two major IT companies accused of enabling the spyware operation.

In another video published by the FSB on Tuesday, director of the sanctioned Russian company Kaspersky Lab Igor Kuznetsov also claimed that Apple iPhones could easily be infected with spyware using what he termed an “invisible iMessage”.

Independent news outlet Agentstvo noted that these videos appeared to be an “escalation of the attacks on Cloudflare and Apple which began in 2023.” Both companies have historically interfered with the Kremlin’s attempts to censor the internet in Russia and monitor the activity of Russian users.

In April, independent news outlet The Bell reported that the FSB’s Second Service, responsible for the poisonings of several opposition figures and combating “ideological sabotage”, was also behind Russia’s escalating internet crackdowns.

The Kremlin has repeatedly cited alleged security threats to justify its internet restrictions, including blocking Western-owned social media platforms and imposing “white lists” of approved websites in major cities.

The unpopular restrictions have been cited as one of the key factors behind recent declines in Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings in Russia, and are also reportedly driving discontent among major business and government officials.