Ex-spy who inspired TV series ‘The Americans’ says Russia will be at war for the next ‘couple of decades’

Andrey Bezrukov, a political scientist and adviser to Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, said at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that Russia will be at war for the next “couple of decades,” producing two generations shaped by the conflict.

Bezrukov spoke during a session titled “Russia’s Main Threats in the Second Quarter of the 21st Century” on the forum’s opening day.

“We need to learn to live with this war. That doesn’t mean we need to stop everything, stop developing the economy. On the contrary — we need to build our state system and our economy in such a way that they fulfill not only the task of development, but also the task of defense,” Bezrukov said.

He argued that modern wars have changed — the goal is no longer to seize territory but to wear down the enemy. The West, he said, is trying to avoid a nuclear confrontation with Russia and is instead “slowly boiling the frog.” The escalation was “visible this morning” in St. Petersburg, he added, referring to Ukrainian drone attacks on the city.

“Even now we understand that a drone using Starlink can fly into any region and hit a specific target. This is a serious problem for us — we were not prepared for it,” Bezrukov said.

He also warned of the threat of biowarfare:

Bezrukov did not say which laboratories he meant or where they are located. Since the state of the war in Ukraine, Russian state media has pushed the claim that Western biolabs are preparing biological weapons against Russia. Meduza examined it in detail in a 2022 report.

Andrey Bezrukov is a retired colonel of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service who previously worked as a spy for the Soviet Union. Beginning in the 1980s, he lived abroad under the name Donald Heathfield. Soviet intelligence recruited him alongside Elena Vavilova (Tracey Foley), whom he had married in Russia before their deployment to North America. In Canada, they staged a chance meeting, married again under their alias identities, and later moved to the United States. They had two sons.

In 2010, Bezrukov, Vavilova, and eight other “illegals” were arrested by the FBI. They were subsequently deported to Russia together with their children. Bezrukov and Vavilova’s sons later recovered their Canadian citizenship. Their family’s story inspired two television shows: the U.S. series “The Americans” and the Russian series “The Russians.”