Surveillance and ‘fixed paranoia’: Western diplomats inform BBC of life in war-time Moscow

“Being the ambassador to Russia was most likely the toughest task of my profession,” Lynne Tracy, who represented the US in Moscow from 2023 and 2025, tells the BBC.

US, UK and European diplomats as soon as performed an important position in Russia, defusing tensions even on the worst moments of the Cold War.

But now, deemed “unfriendly” by President Vladimir Putin’s authorities, Western ambassadors are underneath fixed surveillance, remoted and more and more reduce off from the nation they have been despatched to grasp, because the struggle in Ukraine grinds on by way of its fifth 12 months.

The BBC has spoken to 5 diplomats who’ve served in Russia because it launched its full-scale invasion.

They examine present strain ranges to the Cold War period – when Western embassies have been monitored by way of bodily surveillance, listening devices hidden inside gifts, and “spy mud” – a close to invisible chemical agent used to trace officers.

Hundreds of Russian diplomats have been expelled from nations in Europe and the US after the struggle started in 2022. Moscow responded in variety, declaring a whole bunch of Western diplomats persona non grata and leaving many embassies short-staffed.

Tracy’s 30-year profession took her to nations like Pakistan, the place she survived an armed assault in 2008. But she says that even underneath fixed bodily risk, her posting in Peshawar was, in a way, simpler than Russia.

“There, I nonetheless felt that there have been issues inside my management. What made Moscow harder have been the excessive ranges of uncertainty.”

The fixed strain from Russian counterintelligence was the first supply of such uncertainty, she recollects.