In fact many of those have shown to be compromised by the Russians from the right extremism side - Maassen in Germany, The Wirecard dude in Austria, etc.
And of course a certain party that is all too fond of the Russian corruption money, literally saying the want Austria to turn into a second Orban regime.
https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000213247/wiener-polizi...
Putin successfully convinced the Germans to abandon nuclear power and then pay him to build a dedicated pipeline into Germany - making all of Europe more dependent on Russia.
...and Germans fell for it. There must be dozens, if not hundreds of Russian operatives in German political offices.
If Russia is so influential in Germany how do you explain Germany importing expensive environmentaly damaging LNG from the USA instead of the cheap Russian environmentally friendly natural gas?
Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.
- make tourism/travel harder by limiting visas and having people fly through far away stopovers (Dubai, Istanbul, or Belgrade for those who can afford $2K economy ticket)
- make immigration easier
- make any cross-border business harder - no SWIFT, no way to get in Russian IT-related money and most of the money overall even if transfer happens through 3rd world, etc.
This way people leave, realise they can't live in 2 countries and have to pick, then realise they can't do cross border business nearly as conveniently as they hoped, so concentrate on local or US market, then realise how much easier it is vs doing business in Russia (all they need to do that is a magic kick to initially force them to), and never look back.
Granted, few of them believe in democracy or even opposed to Putin. Mostly they see Europe as "safe place with a system which is easy to game", but that's OK. Their children will integrate and will be different. After all, save for American expats and Hong Kong refugees (who go to UK anyway), these are by far the best kind of immigrants Europe can hope for.
Fabricated personalities can and do get exposed.
There's no point explaining the Russian corruption to me, I lived there for a long time. In this case, however the corruption machine works against Russian agents.
These people are not very smart at all, when you look at recent investigations done on shoestring budgets, many got exposed by extremely simple tradecraft errors and information that can be straight bought from Russian data brokers.
These people are not smart, it’s the western European services that are incompetent, ideologically blind and outdated.
Of course, Bellingcat barely scratched the surface and mainly exposed glorified hitmen rather than actual influence and information agents. There are still probably thousands of illegals with large amounts of legalized money, wide acquaintance networks and zero interest from who should be on top of their arses.
Anecdotally in New Zealand, I know plenty of children of immigrants who have done fine. And their parents that don't integrate (sometimes not even speaking English at all).
AFAIK there isn’t a clean answer to that question.
The lines between businessperson, gangster, intelligence agent are very fluid.
If you gain some success at one of those in Russia you need to start ingratiating yourself with the others because they will come and find you.
It’s like a more brutal version of businessperson / lobbyist in the US. If you want to excel in one you need to be both.
Can you give me an example of a prominent Russia based businessperson who is regularly at odds with the Kremlin?
The US has a few examples of billionaires who decide to take on the White House, sometimes even capturing it for themselves.
That's where you hide your agents, not among major oil or metal company owners (or rather custodians).
How they operate is well described by defectors. Some maintain wide social circles, focusing on Russian emigrants, rich people in general or some other population, like running a hair salon, a real estate agency, a small hotel or some other front.
Some sit quiet and run an errand here and there.