FSB says foreign intelligence agencies planted ‘spyware’ on Russian officials’ phones and monitored their conversations
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said it had uncovered a “large-scale operation” by foreign intelligence agencies to plant “malicious software” on the phones of senior Russian government officials.
Using the technical capabilities of major international IT corporations, representatives of foreign intelligence services, through mobile communications, covertly and without authorization extracted various types of information from the devices of cyberattack targets.
The FSB’s Public Relations Center said the spyware was also used for “covert acoustic and video monitoring of the environment near electronic devices” — going beyond eavesdropping.
In a video published by the FSB, one of the agency’s officers said that “first, intelligence services hack the device, and then, after collecting compromising material, the surveillance targets are systematically placed on U.S. and European Union sanctions lists.”
The investigation is ongoing, he added, but it is already possible to say that “this is a multilevel operation with far-reaching consequences.” The FSB declined to provide further details.
The agency also warned that discussing confidential information on or near mobile phones is “unacceptable, as the content of your conversations may become known to third parties and lead to irreversible consequences.”
In autumn 2025, the American agency Bloomberg published transcripts of conversations involving Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, Russian presidential special representative and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, and U.S. presidential special envoy Steve Witkoff. The agency declined to reveal how the recordings were obtained.
Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov suggested that Ushakov’s phone may have either been infected with spyware similar to Pegasus, or that Putin’s aide was speaking over a regular mobile connection. “In the latter case, the surveillance could have been conducted either by the FSB via SORM, or by any other powerful intelligence service in the world,” he noted.
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