How a Russian operative snared an Irish politician.

Despite his extensive counter-surveillance training, Sergey Prokopiev failed to notice the surveillance officers monitoring his activities at quarters. Officially, Prokopiev served as a counsellor at the Russian embassy on Orwell Road in Dublin, but this was a cover story.

Prokopiev was a spy: a high-ranking military intelligence officer sent to Ireland by Russia’s armed forces to operate under diplomatic cover. His mission was to recruit and handle agents, sources and assets from the worlds of politics, business and media, but also to engage in what Russians call active measures: the modern iteration of the political warfare tactics employed by the KGB during the Cold War.

At the time of his arrival in ­Ireland in March 2019, Prokopiev was focused on rebuilding Russia’s intelligence network on both sides of the border­. He was particularly interested in establishing contacts with loyalist and republican paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, which had sprung to life during­ the Brexit negotiations between the European Union and Britain.

Loyalists were threatening violence over the negotiations, which proposed creating an invisible border in the Irish Sea to prevent the return of a land border. The Kremlin was interested in exploiting these tensions as part of its covert efforts to destabilise relations between Ireland and Britain and the West.

Read more about how 'Classic Cold War tradecraft' lured a sitting member of the Oireachtas to offer his services to a spy.

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