Scientific and technical espionage has always been the most important task of the Soviet secret services. Viktor Suvorov’s autobiographical novel *The Aquarium* describes a completely real situation – the mass recruitment of employees from Western firms participating in the ‘Telecom 75’ exhibition in Geneva in 1975, in which the author took part as an intelligence officer with the GRU’s Geneva station. At that time, the Soviet Union found itself in much the same situation as Putin’s Russia today – it was desperately in need of the latest military-industrial technologies, which the West had prudently banned from export to the USSR. The only options left were smuggling and espionage. 
At the time, GRU agents from several European capitals were responsible for gathering intelligence at the exhibition. Meanwhile, a group of specialists from various secret military-technical departments had flown in from Moscow to provide technical guidance: ‘GRU intelligence officers, officers from the Military-Industrial Committee (VPK) of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, military industry experts, and weapons designers. Of course, none of this is evident from their passports. If you were to believe the passports, they were from the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Foreign Trade, or some non-existent institutions. But can we really trust our passports?’ 
Since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2022, such a ‘get-out-of-jail-free card’ is no longer possible. The direct route to Western Europe for Russian intelligence officers and military-industrial complex specialists has been blocked by sanctions. New routes have to be devised. 
A bit of background. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lifting of the ‘Iron Curtain’, a huge wave of migrants from the former USSR – millions of people – poured across the border. Among them were scientists and students, many of whom went on to build academic careers in the West over the course of a couple of decades. In the 1990s, the reformed security services gained enormous new opportunities – their personnel moved unhindered to the West amongst the general mass of migrants. Furthermore, many staff members of former Soviet embassies and consulates transitioned to the status of independent Western businesspeople, without interrupting their professional activities. But for a time, the purpose of their activities seemed to vanish – Yeltsin’s Russia declared democratic intentions, friendship with the West and all manner of noble goals for its own development. This would, at first glance, seem to rule out intensive espionage and recruitment activities against the democratic world. Or at least it rendered such activities largely superfluous, given that the main tasks of the Soviet-era secret services – the fight against ideological enemies and preparations for the Third World War – had disappeared. 
Under Putin, both of these former tasks were reinstated, and the activities of the secret services began to expand rapidly. In addition to traditional espionage, work with millions of migrants from the former USSR and Russia was added. In the 2000s, a special agency, ‘Rossotrudnichestvo’, and numerous influence networks under its control were created for this purpose. They operated under the guise of civil society organisations and were aimed at working with various social and ethnic groups of migrants. 
Among others, in 2008, at the First International Seminar of Former Soviet Scientists in France, the International Association of Russian-speaking Scientists (Russian-speaking Academic Science Association – RASA) was established.  It had two branches, one in Europe and one in the US (an Asian section was established in 2015). At the same time, in 2008, a government programme was announced to attract former Soviet scientists to Russia on very favourable terms. High-ranking Russian officials and undercover security service personnel attended RASA conferences and seminars. For example, in 2011, a RASA conference was held in Kazan with the participation of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROSNANO, Rossotrudnichestvo, the ‘Russkiy Mir’ Foundation and other Russian organisations. Minister Fursenko spoke there about a competition for mega-grants worth 150 million roubles, intended ‘to invite leading scientists to Russian universities’. 
In February 2016, a meeting of the RASA Council took place in Berlin at the Russian House of Science and Technology, the Rossotrudnichestvo representative office in Germany, which is, in effect, an intelligence centre. Among older émigrés, it was known as the ‘Dzerzhinsky Cultural Centre’. Speakers at the meeting included representatives of Rossotrudnichestvo, the Russian Federation’s Trade Representation in Germany, and the embassy’s adviser on science and technology. By definition, these are all intelligence service officers. And they all share a single objective: recruitment. Access to Western technical secrets. RASA conferences and seminars, which were attended by large numbers of Western scientists of Russian descent alongside Russian officials, undoubtedly provided the authorities with exceptionally favourable conditions for targeted recruitment. It is highly likely that this was precisely why RASA was established. 
For many of its members, unfamiliar with the workings of the Russian secret services, all this activity may have seemed entirely innocent, like purely scientific international cooperation – until a certain point. To those paying close attention, it was already clear by the mid-2000s that the Russian regime was turning into something thoroughly anti-democratic. And after 2014, there could be no doubt about it. 
In February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, any remaining illusions held by most members of the American branch of RASA were finally dispelled. This was presumably because the majority of RASA members are successful Western researchers, financially independent of Russia and feeling entirely autonomous. By that time, the European RASA, like its Asian counterpart, had ceased to exist. The American RASA, however, turned out to be a genuinely independent civil society organisation rather than a puppet organisation, something the Moscow-based initiators of its creation clearly had not anticipated. It became the only one among similar associations to sever ties with the Russian government and speak out against Putin’s regime and his policies. But not all of it. 
In 2013–2014, the president of the American branch of RASA was the American professor Artem Oganov, a 1997 graduate of Moscow State University and a renowned chemist. In 2015, Oganov returned to Russia and became a professor at Skoltech. From 2017 to 2020, he served on the Presidential Council for Science and Education. The author of this text first came across Oganov on social media some 15 years ago. Even then, he was presenting himself as an ideological pro-Putin patriot, which, strangely enough, contradicted his scientific reputation. 
Then, in 2024, a new international award, the ‘Discovery’ Prize, was launched in Russia. It is awarded for ‘scientific discoveries made abroad that contribute to the development of global science’.  Any foreign scientist (or Russian citizen permanently residing abroad) who has made “an important discovery that has influenced the development of science and technology, preferably (but not necessarily) over the last 10 years” is eligible to apply. Applications are open from 3 March to 20 May 2024. 
The prize was established by the ‘Vyzov’ Foundation for the Development of Scientific and Cultural Ties, founded in 2023. The prize money amounts to 11 million roubles (approximately 100,000 euros). 
At first glance, this all looks like blatant recruitment. Russia is beset on all sides by sanctions that make it extremely difficult for the Russian defence industry to obtain the technology and equipment it needs. Independent development could take an indefinite amount of time and offers no guarantee of success. Contacts with foreign states – diplomatic, scientific and cultural – which previously allowed the security services to freely hunt for scientific and industrial secrets around the world, have largely been severed. In this situation, the lure of huge sums of money offered to foreigners for the latest scientific developments could prove highly effective. There is, of course, only one prize, but there may be many applications, and each applicant will be dealt with on an individual basis. In fact, any such application is, in itself, a declaration of readiness for recruitment, originating from Western scientific circles and opening up the most tempting prospects for the Russian security services. 
It was Oganov who became chairman of the ‘Vyzov’ Prize’s scientific committee. The ‘Vyzov’ National Prize for Future Technologies was conceived in 2022 and was first awarded in December 2023 to Russian citizens in four categories: ‘Prospect’, ‘Engineering Solution’, ‘Breakthrough’ and ‘Scientist of the Year’. The organiser and founder of the prize is the ‘Vyzov’ Foundation for the Development of Scientific and Cultural Ties, which was set up specifically for this purpose. The prize’s partners are Gazprombank, the Rosatom State Corporation and the Roscongress Foundation, with the support of the Moscow City Government.
The new international category of the award was announced in March 2023 during the World Youth Festival in Sochi. It appears that the idea of attracting foreign scientists in this way had been conceived shortly beforehand. The need for Western technical know-how is constantly growing as the country becomes increasingly militarised, whilst sanctions and Russia’s international isolation are simultaneously intensifying. Meanwhile, the opportunities for acquiring such know-how have sharply diminished, as have the physical possibilities for making contact with those who possess it abroad.
So the idea of inviting anyone interested to approach the Russian government directly to sell their scientific achievements for a great deal of money looks quite promising. Moreover, this applies only to achievements in technical fields directly or indirectly linked to the military-industrial complex. No humanities scholars. 
The festival itself, held by decree of Putin from 29 February to 7 March, was a mass propaganda spectacle and a recruitment drive, attended by 20,000 people specially invited from all over the world for this purpose. The application period for the prize ran from 3 March to 20 May, so it is quite clear that this was an additional incentive for festival participants, which, by all accounts, worked. 
According to Oganov, by the spring of 2024, 106 applications had already been received from Italy, Germany, Austria, China and Israel. This is the most interesting part. There is only one prize, but there is nothing to prevent the organisers from working with the other applicants individually and behind closed doors. It is unlikely that Moscow can expect any significant success with such a rudimentary method of attracting competition entrants, but more than a hundred people with even the slightest connection to Western science and willing to cooperate with Russia in such an extreme situation – that is also a significant achievement. 
The winner of the ‘Discovery’ Prize competition was announced in December 2024. This in itself is intriguing. Against a backdrop of escalating sanctions against Russia, any Western scientist who publicly and for financial gain places their scientific achievements at Russia’s disposal – even if they are not in breach of the sanctions – is nonetheless putting their reputation at risk.  The winner turned out to be Nikos Logothetis, a professor of neurobiology and honorary director of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, based in Shanghai. He received the prize for his fundamental contribution to the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging.   The prize was formally presented to Logothetis on 19 December 2024 by Alexei Likhachev, Director General of the state corporation ‘Rosatom’. Likhachev himself is subject to sanctions imposed by the UK, Ukraine, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. 
A total of 112 applications were submitted for the competition from 33 foreign countries. The press did not report on who the other applicants were or exactly who Logothetis was competing against. It is easy to assume that the whole operation was launched primarily for the very purpose of working with anonymous applicants.