Last week was a good time to bury bad news in France. While French and international media were focused on president Macron’s Trump-like maverick statement of not ruling out western troops being deployed in Ukraine, a new book slipped out detailing the extent of KGB spying in France during the Cold War. Ironically this was also a week in which Macron and French authorities publicly warned of France being a privileged target of Russian intelligence agencies, through large-scale hacking, manipulation of social media in everything from the French ‘bed-bug scandal’ to the June European elections. Combine this with prime minister Gabriel Attal’s charge in parliament that the Rassemblement National – coincidentally with a 15-point lead in the polls – are the agents of Russia and the cocktail becomes explosive. It does so because France has form for being a soft target for Russian manipulation of politicians, civil servants and journalists.
The KGB had more than 50 agents in France, more than any other western European state
In 1999, the Cambridge historian Christopher Andrew and the Soviet defector Colonel Vasili Mitrokhin published a remarkable volume entitled, The Mitrokhin Archive: the KGB in Europe and the West.
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