Intelligence agencies from at least ten countries have been showing high interest in Russia’s Armed Forces, Head of the Military Counterintelligence Department at the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Colonel General Nikolai Yuryev said in an interview with TASS ahead of the military counterintelligence agency’s centennial anniversary.

"Russia’s Armed Forces still are a matter of interest for foreign intelligence agencies," he noted. "This is proven by the fact that military counterintelligence officers exposed dozens of intelligence agents from the US, Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Georgia and Poland [in the past five years - TASS]," Yuryev added.

The general stressed that the FSB Military Counterintelligence Department and army security agencies were particularly tasked with preventing foreign intelligence agencies from reaching out to the Russian Armed Forces, collecting intelligence concerning security threats, preventing terrorist and subversive activities against the army, as well as with protecting state secrets, countering organized crime, corruption, arms and drug trafficking in the army.

Russia’s military counterintelligence agency will mark its centennial anniversary on December 19.