Shared Opinion | 6 September 2008

If that nice Mr Medvedev is right, and Russia is indeed braced for a new cold war, then the spooks must be on a recruitment drive. Ours, obviously, but theirs too. So spare a thought for the Russian intelligence human resources office, because a career in post-KGB espionage can’t be an easy sell.

The modern British teenager merely believes himself to have a God-given right to be an Arctic Monkey. His Russian counterpart, by contrast, surely considers himself a failure if he reaches the age of 21 without a majority stake in the world’s third largest steel corporation, a medium-sized British football club and a girlfriend who looks like a saucier version of Katie Holmes. With horizons like this, how excited will he be by an economy Aeroflot ticket to London and a briefcase full of dodgy fish that can make you look like Darth Vader without his mask on?

Recruitment abroad must also be tricky.