Tracking Putin’s most feared secret agency—from inside a Russian prison and beyond

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. ABOARD A RUSSIAN PRESIDENTIAL JET—The spy at the front of the cabin drew open the curtain. Wearing a sand-colored jacket and brown shoes, with a salt-and-pepper goatee, the man had spent the past few hours organizing the final preparations for the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War.

Now, as the pilots started the engines to take off for an airport in Turkey’s capital, he came out to look at the 16 prisoners he was escorting to freedom, a haul of Americans, Russians and Germans in their first hours fresh from jails and penal colonies. Scanning the passengers, he locked his eyes squarely on one of those prisoners—me. He said nothing, staring in silence for nearly a minute.

Then he turned and walked back to his curtained-off section of the presidential jet. I was left to wonder about this man at the helm of the exchange, who appeared to hold my fate in his hands. When I was arrested by Russia’s security forces in 2023—the first foreign correspondent charged with espionage since the Cold War—I never stopped reporting.

On my release I set out to identify the man who had taken me, and to learn more about the spy unit that had carried out his orders. During my 16 months’ imprisonment, colleagues at The Wall Street Journal had been asking parallel questions. Together, we have identified the man behind the curtain as Lt.

Gen. Dmitry Minaev and can now reveal a trove of fresh details about the unit that he runs: the Department for Counterintelligence Operations. Known as DKRO, it is at the very core of Putin’s opaque wartime regime.