I'm an ex-KGB sleeper agent… I know the most dangerous weapon in Putin's spy arsenal & it could cause chaos for the West | The Sun

A FORMER KGB sleeper agent has warned of the "most powerful" weapon in Vladimir Putin's spy arsenal – and it could cause chaos for the West.

Jack Barsky, an infamous sleeper agent who spied on the US for ten years during the Cold War, explained how spreading misinformation and propaganda can be the strongest asset of Russian spycraft.

Barsky told The Sun that Putin has the upper hand in the information war when it comes to fabricating "deepfakes" .

These are sophisticated hoaxes in which artificial intelligence is used for generating fake images or videos.

"What the Russians are really very good at is placing falsehoods on the internet, often via the use of deepfakes, but this is not sexy enough to write about," Barsky said.

The technique has been used as early as three weeks after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

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At a time where the world feared Kyiv would fall soon, a video of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky surfaced online, where he was seen addressing his soldiers from behind a podium with the Ukrainian state emblem.

Wearing his signature green attire, Zelensky would ask his fighters to lay down their weapons and go back to their families, saying: "There is no need to die in this war. I advise you to live."

The one-minute clip was massively circulated on social media and briefly ran on Ukrainian television, suggesting that not only had the country's leader fled from Kyiv but the war was coming to an end.

The deepfake was later debunked and removed from social media, with Zelensky dismissing the "desperate" move as a "childish provocation", WION News reported.

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A separate misinformation incident featured the story of a Russian church being set on fire in Volyn, north-western Ukraine.

The news was intensely covered in January 2022 by Russian broadcaster Channel One, sparking anger among viewers.

Reports claimed that the church was attached to the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ukrainian nationalists were responsible for the arson.

But once again the news were debunked as fake, with local authorities in Volyn confirming that no church was set alight in the area.

Barsky also broke down the strengths and weaknesses of Russian espionage after three suspected spies were charged after after hiding behind everyday suburban lives in Britain for a decade.

Orlin Roussev, 45, Bizer Dzhambazov, 41, and Katrin Ivanova, 31, led unassuming suburban lives in Britain for the last 10 years – even calling over to their neighbours with homemade cakes.

The US has also found itself rooting out agents working for Putin.

Maria Butina was found to have been acting as a spy and attempting to steer US politics as she embedded herself in Washington DC.

She was jailed in 2018 before being deported back to Russia, where she is now a member of Putin's parliament – the State Duma.

Barsky was under the KGB for 15 years but revealed his training was sub-par, labelling the Russian intelligence as "not very competent".

"Other than tradecraft, at which the KGB excelled, my training was inadequate, and the advice I got from Moscow was often useless or even dangerous," he told The Sun.

"Basically, they picked highly talented people for the job of a lone wolf illegal and trusted that they would figure things out by themselves, which I did.

"With that said, the organisations that succeeded the KGB, SVR, FSB, and GRU are even less competent.

"The five illegal couples that were arrested in the US in 2010 broke all the basic rules of living as illegals.

"Most recently Butina betrayed that she was a rank amateur – she communicated with Moscow via social media."

The former sleeper agent agrees with the FBI that GRU is the best out of all Russian spy agencies.

He said: "They would send their very best to assassinate a Russian national (Skripal) in another country.

"And even they failed both in execution and in remaining secret.

"The Russians are trying, and the idea to send individuals from the NATO country Bulgaria is rather clever.

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"The Bulgarian alphabet and overall language is very similar to Russian.

"But what were these people doing with regard to espionage based on their social standing in the lower ranks of the middle class? The West likes to sensationalize Russian's espionage activity."

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