In this excerpt from his memoirs, former KGB Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Popov details the deep involvement of Russian intelligence services in political movements and foreign policy, specifically linking SVR officer Petr Suslov to the handler of Max Lazovsky, the organizer of the 1999 apartment bombings. The text also provides an insider account of how the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI) transitioned from an intelligence center to a Kremlin-directed ideological hub that manufactured the analytical justification for the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Published in August 2020, the article identifies key figures like Alexander Dugin and Sergey Chemezov as products of these intelligence-led structures.