The Secret Spy Network Feeding Russia’s War Machine

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From the New York Times,

I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is the Daily.

For years now,

Russia's been the target of Western sanctions

designed to keep it from building advanced weapons.

And yet, it's continued to batter Ukraine

with high-tech missiles and drone attacks.

But how it's managed to do that

has largely remained a mystery.

Until now.

Today, our colleague Jane Bradley

explains what she's uncovered about the network of spies

keeping the Kremlin's war machine running.

It's Friday, August 14th.

Jane Bradley, welcome to the Daily.

Thanks for having me.

So Jane, I remember at the beginning of Russia's war

with Ukraine, there were all of these stories

that basically made it seem like Russia was not equipped

to wage a modern war, right?

Like they were rolling out these sort of mothballed cold war

era tanks, for example.

And yet here we are all these years later,

and we're watching Russia continually hit Ukraine

with these really sophisticated weapons.

So I guess my first question to you is,

how have the Russians seemingly advanced so much

from where they at least appeared to be when the war started?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I mean, in the early days of the war,

the old school equipment that tanks you described,

things like that, worked because it was largely an old school war.

Trench warfare between Ukrainian fighters

and Russian forces as close as 15 feet apart.

So I think soldiers with guns and trenches and bunkers.

The soldiers fire a rocket propelled grenade.

Often they were separated by just a few hundred meters.

But now there's a problem.

A Russian drone is overhead.

But over the last couple of years,

the war in Ukraine has gone really high tech.

This is what a kamikaze drone attack sounds like.

Reports of waves of explosive lead and drone striking

keep in setting residential buildings there on fire.

Ukraine firing the first American-made

lung-range missiles into Russia.

And it shifted from artillery battles

to drone warfare and ballistic missiles.

And this is where Russia has a problem

because it doesn't make this type of technology

that it needs to build these kinds of high tech weapons.

And we're talking about things like semiconductors and microchips

that act as the brain of drones and ballistic missiles

and help direct them to their targets.

And in the early days of the war,

Western countries, allies of Ukraine,

imposed these sweeping trade restrictions,

sanctions designed to keep exactly this type of technology

out of Russian hands.

And yet, obviously, those sanctions have not worked, right?

Because just in the past few months,

we have seen Russia strike keave.

It struck other cities and towns inside Ukraine.

There have been these incredibly devastating consequences.

Hundreds of civilians have died this year.

Exactly.

It hasn't worked.

So Ukraine has been investigating

and trying to figure out how is Russia getting its hands on?

The technology, the parts it's supposed to be cut off from.

How does one even go about trying to trace

the component parts of a missile or a drone

and where they came from?

So every time there's a major attack in Ukraine,

investigators from Ukraine's military intelligence service,

comb through, they dig through, recovered components

from these weapons, these drones, these missiles.

They're actually digging them out of the ground.

Yes.

Okay, well, okay.

Yes, literally combing through, digging it with their own hands,

and they're trying to find microchips

and other weapons components.

And in 2024, these Ukrainian investigators

started to notice something.

A lot of these weapons components that they were finding

were actually coming from Japan.

And this was really surprising.

Japan's been a close ally, a really vocal supporter of Ukraine.

It was one of the first countries to issue sanctions against Russia.

On the very first day, it invaded Ukraine.

And this really shocked and concerned the Ukrainian officials

that I spoke to.

And actually, when I first received a bunch of documents

from Ukrainian sources, which included lists of this equipment,

pictures of this equipment, I was actually speaking to my source

and asked, can you give me an idea of how many of being found

on the battlefield in Ukraine?

And he corrected me.

He was like, this is not the battlefield.

All of these parts are being found in civilian attacks.

And in May, earlier this year,

when these Ukrainian investigators were trawling through the day,

of this awful attack on a residential building in Kiev,

that had killed 24 people, including children,

they found Japanese components inside a missile

that had destroyed the building.

Wow.

And the Ukrainian government estimates that 90% of Russian weapons,

drones, missiles, contained Japanese components.

So Japan is a critical supplier of the Russian war machine.

Okay, so clearly for the Ukrainians, the question is,

if Japan has these sanctions, how are its parts

nonetheless ending up in Russian weapons

that are being used to attack its cities and its civilians?

Exactly.

That's a question that Ukrainian investigators had.

That's a question we had when we first started reporting

this story out, to obviously Japanese companies abandoned

from trading with Russia.

So the question is, how are they getting around these export rules?

How is Russia getting its hands on these Japanese parts

if it's not through legal routes?

How do you even begin to answer a question like that?

So my colleagues and I, Michael Schwartz and Adam Goldman,

started this investigation last year after we got a tip

from an intelligence source.

And that tip eventually led to our conversations

with five different Western intelligence agencies.

And what we found out is that the Russian intelligence service,

the military service, the G.I.U.

actually has a specialized spy unit that's entirely dedicated

to evading Western sanctions and smuggling the parts

of technology that Russia needs for its war machine.

That unit is called the 20th Directorate.

And one of the big breakthroughs we got in our reporting

was finally being able to identify the spy,

the Russian spy leading its operations in Japan,

a guy by the name of Maxime Philchenkov.

Well, so you are uncovering not just this secret, massive spy operation,

the name of it, but you've actually gotten the name of one of the spies.

What do you know about him at this point?

So at this point, we know that he's a veteran G.I.U officer.

He's fluent in Japanese, Russian and English.

Wow.

And he began his second tour of Japan back in 2024,

when he was posted there on paper as an employee of Aeroflot,

the Russian state airline.

So the cover for the spy to be clear is Aeroline executive?

Yes, exactly.

And what's interesting about that is in intelligence circles,

for years Aeroflot has been known to be a cover for Russian spies,

basically.

Well, also being a legitimate airline.

Like, this thing is like a cover for spies,

but also flies people, commercial.

Yeah, exactly.

So who knows who you could be sat next to?

Oh, that's exciting.

Yeah, and it's worth noting that Aeroflot is entirely state owned.

So Russian intelligence services have, for years,

looked for state owned entities that they basically control,

where they can plant spies today like Philchenkov.

And what did you learn about what Philchenkov was doing

under the cover of Aeroflot?

So we spoke to Western intelligence sources to try and figure that out.

And what they told us is that he was sent to Tokyo

to basically develop relationships with a network of logistics companies,

importers, that could be useful for them in smuggling these weapon parts to Russia.

And what are these companies doing for Philchenkov exactly?

Like, can you just explain that?

Yeah, so Philchenkov needs these companies to do a few things for him.

The first thing is to actually buy the components that he needs.

Because of sanctions, Japanese companies are not allowed

to sell these components to Russia or Russian companies right now.

And so Philchenkov needs a middleman company

to basically buy this equipment for him.

And then once he has the equipment, these components,

he needs help shipping it out of Japan to Russia.

Why can't he just fly them though if he ostensibly works for Aeroflot?

I mean, that would be a lot easier for him.

But the sanctions imposed on Aeroflot by Japan and others

means Aeroflot is effectively grounded in Japan.

So they can't actually fly in and out of the country.

And so Philchenkov needs to find these logistics companies in Japan

who will essentially book passage for him

on other airlines which are allowed to fly out of Japan.

And because it's effectively illegal to fly this equipment directly to Russia,

what these logistics companies will do is arrange transport

from Japan to a third party country like Sri Lanka or Vietnam.

And then Aeroflot will charter one of their own planes

from Vietnam or Sri Lanka, say, to get the goods from there to Russia.

And so how is he identifying the kinds of companies that he can turn for Russian purposes?

So Philchenkov is part of a much wider network in the 20th directorate.

And he will have do you colleagues sat in Moscow at desk

who are looking for companies in Japan and elsewhere

which could make good targets for Philchenkov to try and identify

and build up relationships with.

And they tend to target these kind of mid-sized logistics companies,

smaller mid-sized ones that don't attract much attention,

which are registered in Japan, but they tend to have someone Russian in a senior position.

How big is the universe of obscure Japanese companies run by Russians

who are sympathetic to the Kremlin?

You know what, way too big as I found out at this stage with reporting.

But what was helpful is that if you go on the Aeroflot website,

they list their official partners in every country.

So we had the names of two logistics companies.

And then when I looked through the corporate filings,

I found that low and behold, there was a senior Russian in each company

or a Japanese business person with strong connections to Russia,

which is kind of the wider profile they're looking at.

So that gave us a really good lead.

And then we took the names of those companies back to our intelligence sources

and asked them, are these companies worth digging into?

And they basically said, yes.

But just to go back to the spy Philchenkov for a second,

if all of these places are involved in the supply chain,

like Vietnam, Sri Lanka, as you mentioned,

is there a reason that he's in Japan specifically?

Because again, Japan is a Western ally.

He's in Japan for two reasons.

One is that Japan makes the high tech technology that Russia needs.

And sure, China makes some of it, some of the microchips, etc.

But Japan really specializes in particular machine tools,

things that drill, that cut, that they basically need to make these parts

for Russian weapons.

And the second thing is that Japan is known and has been for years as a spy paradise.

So Japan, as spy paradise, and it has this long history of that,

dating back to World War II,

when its once kind of fierce intelligence capabilities were dismantled

by the war's winners, the Americans.

And it's never really recovered since.

You know, it has no foreign intelligence agency at all.

In fact, it doesn't have any centralized intelligence agency.

It's kind of split between these five, six different departments

within different government agencies.

So to answer your question, Japan has a technology that Russia needs.

And it's much easier for Russian spies to operate and base themselves from Japan.

And it's not just Phil Chenkoff.

Our sources told us that dozens of Russian spies fled to Japan

as Europe and the West expelled hundreds as Russian invaded Ukraine.

They found a safe haven in Japan.

Okay, so clearly very easy to be a spy in Japan is what you're telling us.

So at this point, Jane, you have a name, Phil Chenkoff.

You've identified some of the Japanese companies working with him.

What do you do next?

It's one thing to have a bunch of information from anonymous intelligence sources.

But we needed to prove, or at least cooperate, what they told us ourselves.

So the next thing we did was hunt for addresses, for Phil Chenkoff,

for the network of logistic companies we've been told as helping him.

And my aim was to try and speak with Phil Chenkoff,

and as many of those business owners as possible to try and find out what's going on.

And so I booked my tickets to Tokyo in the hope that I could get some of them

to talk to me.

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So, Jane, at this point, you are headed to Tokyo.

You're on the trail of this Russian spy.

What's the protocol for something like this?

Can you just knock on his door like any other source?

I'm not sure there is a protocol for trying to hunt down a T.I.U. officer.

I didn't know of one.

And honestly, I had no idea what to expect.

And when I got there, Phil Chenkov was the first person on my list, obviously,

to try and get to speak to me.

So I rocked her at the Aeroflot office with my translator.

Uh-huh.

It's like a sparkling 22 story plus tower block by this old shrine.

And we just walked in.

We just walked in.

Was this huge?

There was no security.

There was no reception desk.

I guess Tokyo is such a safe city that you can just walk straight into the lift,

go up to the 22nd floor, and the door is opened.

And I was taken by surprise because the Aeroflot office door is literally right there.

And I knocked on the door and middle-aged woman with a Russian Orthodox cross-round her neck answer the door.

She looked really surprised to see me.

So I just introduced myself with my name and asked if Mr. Phil Chenkov was in the office.

She again, so looking quite surprised, said he wasn't, and that we would need to make an appointment.

And over the next three days we were in this kind of almost comedy-like cat and mouse chase with him.

So every time we knocked,

she would say, come back at this time.

I would come back at that time.

She kept telling us he wasn't around and then it got to the day before my flight.

Sorry to bother you. I have to fly back tomorrow.

I just wanted to see Mr. Phil Chenkov.

I'd said, please can we speak to Mr. Phil Chenkov?

I should ask you.

And she says, I'm sorry Mr. Phil Chenkov never wants to speak for you.

Oh wow, rude.

Yes, rude.

There was no potential at that point.

I would come back another time.

And we never got in front of him despite his trying to contact him for three days and him having our numbers and clearly knew who we were.

But we then set off on the trail of trying to track down business associates who had met him and did know what he was doing at Aeroflot.

And how did that go?

So one of the people we knew that Phil Chenkov worked with was a guy called Takahiko Miki.

And he was the owner of a company called Proko Air, which is this logistics company which helps organize cargo gang from A to B.

And we tracked him down to this high rise in Tokyo's industrial port neighborhood.

And his wife answered the door and they eventually invited us in.

And when you walk in, you see these model planes.

There was an Aeroflot plane that was certificate to Proko Air for its excellent service to Aeroflot.

And we followed him into his own office.

It's kind of dim windowless room.

And he's really not what you would imagine someone accused of helping a Russian spy, procure sanctioned goods to Russia, would look like he's got this real earnest manner.

And sources had described to me as this kind of teddy bear like figure. And that is how he comes across.

And he seemed like he really wanted to help and he answered all my questions.

And he really just was very insistent that yes, he works with Aeroflot, yes, he works with Phil Chenkov.

But no, he does not ship any sanctioned goods to Russia and that he would never do that.

So what is he telling you?

He's shipping.

If he's being so open about the fact that he actually ship stuff.

Yeah, so he claimed that he only ships medical equipment and a few cosmetics.

And there are exemptions allowed for medical equipment, sanctioned carveouts.

So he said this was all above board.

There is no way he would ship sanctioned goods or his business would shut down.

And honestly, like I don't think I'm gullible or naive.

But he did come across as very earnest and almost convincing in that I could imagine him being a bit negligent.

And not crying out the cheques, the due diligence cheques he should have done.

How is that possible though exactly?

Like you said that maybe he's not doing his due diligence, but like, how would he not know what he's shipping basically?

Yeah, I mean, that's a very good question.

And I guess a report on sanctions, Russian sanctions for years.

And one of the defenses I would often hear is that, oh, we didn't know Russia was the final destination, right?

We thought this was just going to Vietnam or Sri Lanka.

And then the other defenses that, oh, I just took the pay to work at face value

and I didn't know these were actually sanctioned goods and the paperwork was all bogus.

And one of the defenses he relied on was just like, I'm just booking cargo space, right?

On these planes, I'm not the manufacturer, I'm not the supplier.

And I played a little dumb and asked him if he could show me an example of an invoice.

And he then gestures to his wife to fetch the nearest invoice from the top of a pile in the office.

He brings it back to me.

And before he gives it to me, he attempts to redact identifying information.

So who's shipping it?

But what do you mean redact?

Like he's just striking things out with a pen?

Yeah, exactly.

He just got a black marker pen and crossed out the details he didn't want me to see.

And I left that interview with that piece of paper in my hand.

And when I got back to the hotel and held it up to the light, the redactions did it work.

You could completely see who, who the receiver, who he was shipping this equipment to.

Oh my god.

Honestly, it was one of those reporting breakthrough moments that is really exciting.

What did you see, where was he shipping it to once he held it up to the light?

Yeah, so I could see that the company he was supplying that he was shipping to

was a Russian pharmaceutical company called R-Farm.

And its founder had actually been sanctioned by the UK, by Canada, by Australia,

for his extensive ties to Vladimir Putin.

Wait, okay, so does that mean that when you were in his office, he was lying to you

and he said, oh, I don't know what's in it.

And what do I do know?

It's all legal and above board.

That's what the evidence suggests.

Okay.

And when I got back from Tokyo, we actually spoke to two people who told us that Mr. Meeky

had specifically asked for help, shipping prohibited items that he acknowledged

were banned from being exported to Russia.

Okay, so maybe not just a guy who was negligent with his paperwork.

Right, exactly.

I want to go back to how this whole reporting journey started

because if you are able to piece this together, the Western intelligence sources

that tipped you off, presumably they knew all this already, right?

Why did they tip you off in the first place?

Like, what did they need from you?

They tipped us off in the first place because they were both baffled and frustrated

about Japan's lack of response.

So let's be clear, both Ukrainian officials and foreign governments had warned Japan

that this was happening, that Russian intelligence officers were operating

in Tokyo and procuring this Japanese technology and that this Japanese technology

was repeatedly being found on the battlefield in Ukraine and being used in civilian attacks.

Were Ukraine as basically telling Japan everything that Ukraine thinks it needs to know

to take some kind of action?

Exactly.

They think they could take action to cut off the supply of Japanese parts to Russia

if there was the political will to do so.

So I spoke to a Ukrainian official who said that in the early days of the war

they were finding a lot of parts from Germany in Russian weapons, up to 20% actually in the early days.

And they warned the Germans and Germany almost immediately cut off the supply of German components to Russia.

And Japan has it done the same, so that's one example that they pointed to say

if the political will is there, they can choke the supply chain.

But Japan has not done that.

But as you pointed out, Japan does not have the intelligence apparatus that Germany does, right?

And that's what's made them as you have explained this spy paradise for lack of a better term.

So where does Japan stand on this sort of bigger problem of not having that intelligence operation

that they might need to counter all of this?

Yeah, I think the first thing to say is that Japan acknowledges it has a problem when it comes to espionage right now today.

And actually when I sat down and talked with a senior lawmaker in Japan's government

and asked about what they knew about the spies operating in Japan, he said that look,

we have a sense of crisis about the situation.

We don't have an exact number on the spies operating in Japan in Tokyo, but we know there are lots.

And more broadly, Prime Minister Takahichi is really trying to build up Japan's intelligence capabilities.

She's trying to build under this new legislation that's been passed Japan's first centralized intelligence agency.

But if it succeeds, if Japan succeeds, this is going to be a long term project

and not something that's going to happen overnight.

How does this get solved then? Like where does that leave everything?

Well, in the days after we published our investigation, we heard from sources that the Japanese government had begun investigating Philchenkov

and Mr. Miki of Prokowa and were kind of looking into what was going on here.

And we got some news recently that Philchenkov, the Giu spy, has actually fled Japan the day after we published our story.

Oh wow.

Yes, it seems like putting the spotlight on him and this wider problem Japan has had the effect that our sources wanted it to

and that Philchenkov has been bent, his identity is now out there.

And Japan seems to have been embarrassed into some kind of action, though we need to spend a bit more time watching it to see how substantive that is.

Basically, this guy's cover was blown, so we can't really act like a spy anymore.

He flees. I wonder, Jane, where does his departure leave this giant sanctions-busting operation that he's helped set up?

Like the supply chain that has been very well underway funneling parts to Russia?

Yeah, I think Philchenkov is an important player for Russia for the 20th directorate, but he's still only one player.

So him fleeing has definitely made it harder for Russia to get the technology it needs from Japan.

But there are many other players, we know there are dozens of Russian spies in Japan alone.

So there will be others that can take his place to unless something drastically changed in Japan, whether it's the espionage laws, whether it's a crackdown on the manufacturers, the companies that are part of this supply chain, then somebody else is just going to pop up and replace Philchenkov and the supply chain will continue.

I wonder, Jane, let's just say that Japan is able to crack down on all of this and does so tomorrow, expels all the spies, stops the technology, ends everything.

How meaningful would that actually be to Russia's war effort in Ukraine?

It would be incredibly meaningful. The pipeline of these Japanese components to Russia is absolutely essential for Putin to keep waging his war against Ukraine.

If that supply was cut off, Russia would not be able to maintain its weapons to build new weapons, particularly, you know, drones, ballistic missiles, all this high tech equipment that the war has now become more dependent on.

So Japan is playing a really high stakes game here. If Japan takes meaningful action in a way that is bigger than just one spy, however important he is, fleeing Japan, it has this real opportunity to change the course of a war that has raged on for four years now.

The question now is whether Japan is going to take the chance to do that.

Jane, I have to ask, now that Philchenkov's cover has been blown, what does he do now? What can a spy do once everybody knows who they are?

Well, he's almost certainly back in Russia and his foreign intelligence career is without a doubt over, you know, his faces out there, his name is out there. He won't be able to work as a spy abroad again.

What often happens with these spies whose covers are blown is that they get heroes welcome back in Russia, often they get a medal or they get appointed to a spy school to train the next generations.

So the cycle starts again.

Jane Bradley, thank you so much. Thanks for having me Rachel.

Jane Bradley, she's an investigative reporter for The New York Times and you can get even more reporting.

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Here's what else you need to know today.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Boston dismissed the Trump administration's anti-Semitism lawsuit against Harvard,

dealing a blow to the White House's efforts to force the school to make a deal with them.

The Trump administration had accused the University of turning, quote, a blind-eyed anti-Semitism and discrimination against Jews and Israelis after the war in Gaza began.

The lawsuit was part of a broader pressure campaign to force the university to comply with a variety of demands relating to its handling,

anti-Semitism, and race and admissions.

The judge said the anti-Semitic incidents cited by the administration were, quote, too isolated and episodic to show that Harvard was breaking the law.

And the board of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. voted on Thursday to put President Trump's name back on the side of the building beneath the main sign.

That's according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The president's name had been added to the building last year, but a judge had ordered that it be taken down, finding that only Congress had the authority to change the institution's name.

The move by the Trump-aligned board of the Kennedy Center is an aggressive test of the judge's decision.

Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lynn, Jessica Chung, and Olivia Nat, with help from Adrian Hurst.

It was edited by Annie Minoff, with help from Maria Bern, Chris Haxel, and Michael Benoit.

Contains music by Alicia Bay YouTube, Dan Wong, and Dan Powell.

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That's it for the daily. I'm Rachel Abrams. See you on Sunday.

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