Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Foreign Intelligence Service traces its lineage to a specific date on the 20th of December 1920. Vladimir Lenin established the Special Section of the Cheka that day to handle foreign intelligence operations.
Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the Cheka, created the Foreign Department to improve how information was collected and shared abroad. This unit became part of the State Political Directorate or GPU on the 6th of February 1922.
A new Law on Foreign Intelligence Organs passed by the State Duma and Federation Council in late 1995 was signed into effect by President Boris Yeltsin on the 10th of January 1996. Since 2012, the President of the Russian Federation can personally issue any secret orders to the SVR without consulting parliament.
High-profile cases involved Americans working as sources for Russian agencies including Aldrich Hazen Ames who provided highly classified information since April 1985 leading to the execution of at least nine United States agents in Russia. Harold James Nicholson was arrested while attempting to take top secret documents out of the United States in November 1996.
Sergei Tretyakov an SVR officer working undercover at the Russian UN mission defected to the United States with his family in October 2000. He often sent intelligence officers to branches of the New York Public Library where they gained access to the Internet without anyone knowing their identity.
Sanctions were imposed on May 2023 by the United States Department of the Treasury pursuant to Executive Order 14024. These actions followed reports that the agency defined the Russian position on nuclear technology transfers to Iran and modification of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.