Not so secret spying

praguepost.com

Russian spies have been caught in any number of countries; that is a sign of incompetence, not strength.

The Soviet Committee for State Security, or the KGB, was once the most feared security agency of the former Soviet Union. Its widespread use of domestic informers to denounce dissidents in order to suppress criticism of the corrupt regime and the Communist Party was the stuff of legend.
The KGB, however, also was responsible for foreign espionage, spying on countries deemed hostile to the interests of the USSR - such as the United States, West Germany, the United Kingdom and France - and on its allies in the Warsaw Pact, among them Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and East Germany.
In the Warsaw Pact countries of Central Europe, the KGB was highly efficient. It managed to recruit agents from local security agencies such as the Czechoslovak StB, the Polish UB and others with the full cooperation of the governments in power in these countries.

More...