Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 6 September 2008

A new cold war means spies. But what can Russia offer Oxbridge graduates these days?

issue 06 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.

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