Short answers, pulled from the story.
The SVR is Russia's civilian foreign intelligence agency, tasked with conducting espionage and intelligence operations exclusively outside Russian borders. Its director reports directly to the President of the Russian Federation and provides the president with daily intelligence digests. Unlike comparable Western agencies, the SVR also recommends to the president which policy options are preferable.
The SVR officially traces its origins to the 20th of December 1920, when Felix Dzerzhinsky created the Foreign Department, known as INO, within the Cheka. The SVR as a distinct agency was formally established in December 1991 as the successor to the KGB's First Chief Directorate after the Soviet Union's dissolution.
Aldrich Hazen Ames, a CIA officer, passed classified information to Russia from April 1985 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole; his information led to the execution of at least nine United States agents. FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen also received a life sentence for more than 15 years of espionage, passing thousands of pages of classified documents on nuclear war defenses and exposing three Russian agents working for the United States.
Zaslon is a special forces unit within the SVR, established by secret decree on the 23rd of March 1997 and operational by 1998. Units were deployed to Russian embassies in Baghdad, Iran, and Damascus. The unit drew criticism following the assassination of Russian ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara on the 19th of December 2016.
The SVR recruits Russian citizens living abroad, particularly in Western countries, using what analyst Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy described as a second pillar of love for Russia, replacing the old communist ideological appeal. In June 2010, the FBI arrested ten individuals running deep-cover SVR operations aimed at penetrating United States policy circles; the network had been betrayed by SVR defector Colonel Alexander Poteyev, who served as deputy head of the illegal spies directorate.
SVR officer Sergei Tretyakov, before defecting in October 2000, described sending intelligence officers to New York Public Library branches to post propaganda on educational websites and contact American broadcasters, aiming to promote anti-American sentiment and cause dissension inside the United States. In recent years the SVR issued false official statements claiming NATO forces were ready to occupy Moldova after the 2025 parliamentary election and alleging that protest movements in Georgia and Serbia were Western-orchestrated plots.