The Federal Security Service said it had uncovered a “large-scale campaign by foreign intelligence services” to install “malware” on the phones of senior Russian government officials.
Using the technical capabilities of major international IT companies through the use of mobile communications, representatives of foreign intelligence services carried out unauthorized declassification of various types of information from the devices of the targets of cyber attacks.
In addition to eavesdropping, the Federal Security Service’s Public Relations Center (PSC) said spyware was used for “covert audio and visual monitoring of the situation near electronic devices.”
In the video published by the Federal Security Service, an intelligence officer says, “First, the intelligence services infiltrate the device, and after collecting incriminating evidence, the victims of surveillance are systematically included in the sanctions lists of the United States and the European Union.”
He adds that the investigation is still ongoing, but we can already say that “this is a multi-level process with far-reaching consequences.” The Federal Security Service refused to reveal other details.
At the same time, the intelligence service warned that discussing confidential information on or near mobile phones “is unacceptable, because the content of your conversations may become known to third parties and lead to irreversible consequences.”
In the fall of 2025, the American Bloomberg Agency published the text of the talks in which Russian Presidential Assistant Yuri Ushakov, the Special Representative of the Russian President, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev, and the Special Envoy of the US President Steve Witkov participated. The agency did not reveal how to obtain these records.
Investigative journalist Andrei Zakharov suggested that Ushakov’s phone may have been infected with spyware like Pegasus, or that Putin’s aide was speaking on a regular mobile phone. “In the latter case, eavesdropping could be carried out either by the Federal Security Service through SORM or by any other powerful intelligence service in the world,” he noted.