A mustachioed man in an old-fashioned suit stood outside the Kazakh embassy in Washington, surrounded by reporters, and read from a piece of paper: “My name is Borat Sagdiev ...

The house on Lubyanka, where the office of the main Russian special service is located, does not have a single signboard. Only a memorial plate of Yuri Andropov and printed ads that “from October entry with a proximity pass.” For outsiders, it is now an architectural monument. And the initiates no longer fully understand who and in what status works here. In September, Vladimir Putin, by his decree, dismissed a number of high-profile leaders from the FSB.