The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad

Soldatov and Borogan's second major work traces a century of Russian attempts to monitor, manipulate, and weaponise its diaspora communities abroad — from the NKVD's pursuit of White Russian émigrés in the 1920s through the KGB's Cold War operations to the FSB's contemporary programme of influence and control over Russian-speaking communities across Europe and North America. The book draws on the authors' extensive source network inside Russia's security services and documents specific operational cases with unusual precision.

The Compatriots is directly relevant to the contemporary FIMI threat landscape because it documents one of Russia's most consistent and underappreciated tools of foreign influence: the use of diaspora communities as vectors for intelligence collection, narrative shaping, and political pressure. As Russian-speaking populations in European countries have become increasingly significant political constituencies, the Kremlin's long-standing infrastructure for engaging — and controlling — those populations has acquired new strategic importance. For practitioners advising governments or organisations on Russian influence operations in Western contexts, this book provides essential historical and operational context that most contemporary accounts lack.