Officially, work on developing SORM (Russia’s System of Operational Investigative Measures on Telecommunications Networks) began in 1994, when analog communication lines were being replaced with digital ones. However, in reality, the SORM project was developed back in the Soviet era, within the KGB of the USSR.

Eavesdropping in the Soviet Period

Work on creating a centralized eavesdropping system began at the top-secret KGB research institute in Kuchino, near Moscow, during the last decade of the Soviet Union. Kuchino is the oldest research facility of the Soviet secret services; the first laboratories were opened there in 1929. Inside the KGB, Kuchino had legendary status: unique technologies were developed here, such as eavesdropping on conversations indoors by reading windowpane vibrations with an infrared beam. Under Stalin, prison labor was used there. Today, Kuchino is the Central Research Institute of Specialized Equipment of the FSB (NII-1).

The SORM project was intended as a response to the extremely ineffective KGB wiretapping system of the Soviet Union. The quality of phone lines was extremely poor, phone exchanges in Moscow were of all different types, some dating back to the 1930s, and the underground communication lines were awful; in some cases, it was physically impossible to get lines connected to the central listening point.  Instead, a network of so-called “control points” scattered throughout the capital was established—164 points in the final years of the Soviet Union.

At any one time, the KGB could monitor no more than 300 telephone lines in Moscow (this was handled by the 12th Department of the KGB, which reported directly to the Chairman of the State Security Committee). A total of nine hundred people served in the 12th Department in Moscow, and another four hundred in Leningrad. The controllers were all women trained in typing and shorthand. The review of personnel files before hiring took a year. The controllers’ salary was approximately 300 rubles, but they were constantly understaffed. This was partly because it was known that after 15 years of work, people went deaf. An average of eight to eleven hours of recordings could be made per day, with seven hours of work required for the controllers to decipher one hour of recording. The wiretapping equipment was manufactured in Riga at the “Kommutator” plant and the “Alfa” enterprise.

Formally, wiretapping was regulated by KGB Order No. 0050 of 1979, signed by Yuri Andropov. However, the order had only one restriction: it strictly prohibited the wiretapping of Communist party functionaries.

The USSR Law of June 12, 1990, “On Amendments and Supplements to the Fundamentals of Criminal Procedure of the USSR and the Union Republics,” introduced wiretapping of telephone and other conversations into the system of investigative actions. Based on this law, in 1990, the Supreme Court, the Ministry of Justice, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the KGB adopted joint “Recommendations on the Use of Video, Sound Recording, Film and Photographic Equipment, and Telephone Communications, and the Use of the Obtained Results in Solving and Investigating Crimes.”

Wiretapping of telephone conversations was first designated as an operational-investigative measure in 1991, in Section 3 of Article 14 of the USSR Law “On State Security Agencies in the USSR.” This law did not define what was meant by this operational-investigative measure or establish the procedure for its implementation.

Wiretapping in post-1991 Russia

Although R&D on SORM was conducted in the 1980s, the new system was not operational during the Soviet era, and the first phase of implementation—on analog telephone lines—only began in 1992, with the issuance of Order No. 226 of the Ministry of Communications of the RSFSR dated June 24, 1992, “On the Use of Communications Facilities to Support the Operational-Investigative Activities of the Ministry of Security of the Russian Federation.”

This order required the heads of organizations and enterprises of the Ministry of Communications to ensure that operational-technical units of the Ministry of Security of the RSFSR were provided with the ability to carry out operational-investigative activities such as monitoring mail, eavesdropping on telephone and other conversations, obtaining information from technical communication channels, and to provide them with the necessary assistance.

Then came the directive instruction of the Ministry of Communications dated November 11, 1994, No. 252-u, “On the Procedure for Implementing SORM in the Russian Federation,” which approved the technical requirements for the system of technical means supporting operational-investigative activities at electronic telephone exchanges (SORM).

The author of the SORM project on the part of the secret services was Andrei Bykov, Deputy Director of the FSB from 1992 to 1996, holding the rank of Colonel General. Prior to this, he headed the OTU (Operational-Technical Directorate) of the KGB. There was an internal logic to this appointment: after 1991, the 12th Department of the KGB was transferred to the KGB of independent Russia, and incorporated into the OTU of the new Russian special services.

An engineer by training, Bykov studied at the M6 (small arms) department of the Bauman Moscow Higher Technical School. Upon graduating he was recruited to serve in  the KGB in the Operational-Technical Directorate, which he eventually headed. It was this directorate that oversaw the operation of the sharashkas in Marfino (the one where Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned) and Kuchino during Stalin’s time.

When, after the August 1991 coup, the 12th Department was absorbed into the OTU, Bykov became deputy director of the new Russian security service. In the early 1990s, Bykov’s signature appeared on many documents related to SORM.

Bykov had to answer uncomfortable questions from dissidents and journalists about how the KGB spied on its own citizens. He came up with the idea of obtaining authorization for wiretapping from some external body that could approve the surveillance. Initially, he promoted the idea of the prosecutor’s office issuing warrants, but in 1995, a decision was made to rely on court warrants (Federal Law No. 144 “On Operational-Investigative Activities”).

However, it was decided not to change the technical method of complete and unrestricted access to all means of communication, developed in the KGB laboratory in Kuchino in the 1980s. In practice, this meant that intelligence agencies would obtain a court warrant but would not show it to the operator. Bykov had no intention of changing the wiretapping technology developed in the Soviet KGB.

Meanwhile, communications were developing rapidly in the new Russia, and it was clear that Kuchino alone was unable to adapt SORM to new telecommunications technologies that were swiftly introduced in the country—fiber optics, paging, mobile communications, and the internet. The new, much more complicated and sophisticated system emerged, and involving several actors.

Allocation of Roles between the FSB and Communications Officials

SORM as a technical system consists of two parts: the equipment installed on communication lines and nodes – essentially a backdoor; and the equipment installed in FSB headquarters buildings, where FSB officers conduct eavesdropping. In comms terminology, this is “SORM technical equipment located at a remote control point (RCP), communication channels between SORM station equipment and RCPs belonging to the FSB of Russia, including channel-forming equipment located at the RCP.”

Work on equipment designed to operate in FSB buildings was left to the FSB Research Institute, while the development of standards for SORM equipment installed at communications operators was divided among several research institutes of the Ministry of Communications.

The Central Research Institute of Information Systems (TsNIIS) in Moscow developed long-distance telephone exchanges, so it was tasked with developing SORM for these exchanges. The St. Petersburg branch (LONIIS) historically developed local telephone exchanges, so it took on SORM for them. When cellular communications emerged, a third institute, the Radio Research Institute (NIIR), joined in.

In 2003, then Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman signed Order No. 77 “On the Implementation of Technical Means to Support Investigative Operations on Telecommunication Networks of the Russian Federation,” appointing TsNIIS as the lead SORM research agency.

The same order tasked TsNIIS with establishing a “Center for Scientific and Technical Support for the Implementation of SORM on Russian Telecommunication Networks” within TsNIIS, securing funding from the R&D fund. The minister strongly recommended that telecom operators engage the Center for preliminary assessments and preparation of recommendations to regional offices of the Russian FSB regarding the feasibility of operating SORM technical equipment, as well as for testing upon acceptance of SORM station components from manufacturers.

The key developers of SORM at TsNIIS were Vyacheslav Gusev (director of the SORM center) and Evgeny Zharov (leading specialist), while the curators included Sergei Adzhemov (head of TsNIIS from 1962 to 1982), his son Alexander Adzhemov (CEO of TsNIIS from 2002 to 2012), Andrey Gryazev (CEO of TsNIIS from 2014 to 2018), Roman Kurguzov (in 2019), and Olga Bychkova (since 2020, a former Radio Research Institute graduate).

SORM Oversight by the Ministry of Digital Development

From the Ministry of Communications, oversight of SORM work was assigned to the First Deputy Minister—under Reiman, this was Yuri Andreevich Pavlenko, a graduate of the Military Diplomatic Academy, which trained personnel for the GRU. Pavlenko served in embassies in the UK and Canada before moving into the telecommunications business.

In effect, this established a tradition of having a deputy minister-level official with an intelligence background within the Ministry of Communications to oversee such a sensitive issue as eavesdropping equipment.

When Pavlenko left the Ministry of Communications, he was replaced by Boris Antonyuk, a graduate of the P. Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University with experience at the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers for Science and Technology, where he handled cooperation with foreign countries in the field of communications. Antonyuk was always considered “one of our guys” by the security services, as he had headed the state-owned enterprise “Space Communications” for a long time. He held the position of First Deputy Minister until 2008.

After Reiman left the ministry following the formation of the Putin government under President Medvedev in 2008, the minister’s post was taken by Igor Shchegolev, who was personally close to the intelligence services. He began his career at TASS and was a staff correspondent in Paris, where he was associated with the KGB’s First Chief Directorate (foreign intelligence).

Shchegolev brought Naum Marder back to the ministry as deputy (Marder had already served as Deputy Minister of Communications in the 1990s but was forced to resign after Reiman’s arrival). Marder oversaw the communications industry, including relations with the intelligence agencies.

Marder was considered to have had excellent relations with the FSB: in the 1990s, he was regularly embroiled in scandals, but it was believed that he was assisted by Valery Mikhailovich Matrosov, head of the FSB’s Information Security Center in the early 2000s, who had overseen the industry since the 1980s and was on friendly terms with Marder.

Under Shchegolev, the Department of Infrastructure Projects of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation oversaw the preparation of SORM documents (since 2012, Vartan Khachaturov, a vocal speaker at specialized conferences on SORM and the Yarovaya Law, has served as the department’s deputy director).

Khachaturov subsequently headed Kryptonite, a company created by entities owned by Anton Cherepennikov (the founder of Citadel, the largest manufacturer of SORM equipment) and Rostec, and has been under U.S. sanctions since 2023.

In 2012, Shchegolev was replaced by Nikolai Nikiforov. Two years later, Alexei Sokolov, a former FSB officer and advisor to Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, became Nikiforov’s deputy. Sokolov oversaw information security, including SORM, at the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications, and Mass Media until his departure in 2020. His replacement was Oleg Ivanov, a retired major general. He managed the ministry’s federal projects “Information Infrastructure” and “Information Security,” and also oversaw the Department of Infrastructure Projects, the Department of State Policy in Communications, and the Department of Information Security.

In the spring of 2021, Ivanov was relieved of his post as deputy minister. He was replaced by another former intelligence official, Alexander Mikhailovich Shoitov, a graduate of the FSB Cryptography Academy. As deputy minister, Shoitov oversees the cybersecurity department and SORM.

Ivanov, in turn, became the CEO of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise (FSUE) NIIR, which was responsible for developing SORM for mobile communications. A year later, in 2022, the Central Research Institute of Communications (TsNIIS), the lead enterprise for SORM development, was merged with FSUE NIIR. Ivanov continued to head the new enterprise.

The NIIR was then reformatted as a Federal State Budgetary Institution, and in January 2025 was renamed NITS Telecom (full name: M.I. Krivosheev National Research Center for Telecommunications; since 2026, it has been headed by Vasily Semenov).

Compliance with SORM requirements by operators is verified by Roskomnadzor agencies, both during scheduled inspections of telecom operators’ activities in accordance with the approved inspection plan and during unscheduled inspections.

On the FSB Side

Back in the early 1990s, the former 12th Department of the KGB received the status of an independent directorate, becoming the OOTM (Department of Operational and Technical Measures).

In the early 2000s, the directorate was renamed the 12th Center, or the Center for Operational and Technical Measures. As an operational unit, the center works with the SORM system both as a client and as a customer. Since 2023, it has been headed by Igor Bibichev (the former head of the 12th Department, Sergei Efremov, became vice president of the Citadel holding company in 2017).

In turn, the Organizational and Analytical Directorate of the Scientific and Technical Service (STS) of the FSB collects encryption keys under the Yarovaya Law.

In the regional FSB directorates, similar functions are performed by the 12th departments of the FSB regional directorates: these departments determine plans for the implementation of SORM equipment for operators (if the operator works in several regions, then with the 12th Center), and their employees use SORM in their operational activities.

Agentura.ru April 2026