Created out of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (FCD) in 1992, the Sluzha Vneshnogo Razvedsky (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service) operates overseas and was headed by a KGB veteran, Vyechslav Trubnikov, until he was replaced in January 1996 by Gen. Sergei Lebedev, formerly the SVR rezident in Washington, D.C. The
SVR, based in the old FCD headquarters at Yaseveno, is estimated to employ 12,000 staff, a small proportion of whom are posted abroad at rezidenturas in diplomatic premises. Whereas the FCD’s Directorate S deployed illegals across the globe, SVR defectors have suggested that this capability has proved expensive and unnecessary and has been cut radically.