The photo in the Aleksandar Tots service card is worn, the corners are slightly wrinkled. The person in the photo is much younger, with a short haircut and sharp features. Next summer it will be 30 years since Tots started working in the security police. I don’t know how he will celebrate. He spends most of his time in nature, he has focused on rural work, but he doesn’t specify where exactly. “Hey, let’s not try to profile myself,” he says with a cold smile on his face when I ask about his favorite book. “We don’t make life easy for our opponents.”
He has spent the last fifteen of those 30 years working on issues related to Russia. Trying to guess of Russia actions and surprise the unprepared. He tracked down spies, many of them former colleagues of Toths. When I ask him how he felt when I questioned Aleksei Dresen for the first time, he is silent at first. Dressen was his colleague, once his boss, then his subordinate. They drank their morning coffee together and probably chatted for a long time in the parking lot. Until it became clear that Dresen is a traitor working for Russia.
Tots believes that the whole of Russian society is characterized by a kind of exhibition: let’s pretend that everything is fine, even if in reality it is not. At least in part, this also applies to local secret services, he says. And what about this omnipotent system and with thousands of agents working for it?
“Disorder is a specific feature of their culture. Russians must always have a shepherd, if there is no shepherd anarchy ensues,” says Toths. When he talks about Russia he always uses the word “adversary”, never “enemy”, because this word has too strong a connotation. It is not needed. In comparison with Russia, it should be expected that Russians can be overly emotional, but at the same time unrelenting. They are strong, ambitious, ruthless and cruel.
