As the third episode of The Undeclared War begins, Vadim Trusov (German Segal) meets with Saara Parvin (Hannah Khalique-Brown) on Sunday, April 28, 2024. The episode jumps back 15 months to the Imperial College in London as James Cox (Edward Holcroft) teaches his students about the surface of a revolution. Vadim watches and draws Saara as she answers the professor’s question. After an art class, he meets with a friend as they watch a news report about Russia recalling them or encouraging them to come home. He goes back to St Petersburg and tells his friend Pyotr that he needs a job. His friend reveals they’ve taken him back where he did his vac work so he could ask them. Vadim thanks him even though his friend warns him that he won’t like what they do there.

He doesn’t care since he just needs the money. He shows up at Glavset which is the source of Russia’s Twitter campaign against the United Kingdom. The supervisor tells him that this guy is the villain and it is his job to say how great everything is in the UK. As for the saint, it is her job to argue with the villain and say everything is falling apart in the UK. Vadim’s job is to be the stooge and agree with the saint. He is given a list of identities to use and told girls work best because they get more hits. When the identity gets blocked, create a new one. They’re supposed to be British so he is urged to use lots of English slang. His minimum is eighty tweets a day. He is warned to be on time because it’ll be a 500 ruble find if he is late. Once the supervisor leaves, Vadim asks the girl whether these people are real.

She says yes as she sends a Tweet about the London elite hating Putin because he is making Russia strong again unlike the UK where they’re in the crap. She tells Vadim that it is his time, but it is too late now. The villain responds by discussing a lack of free speech in Russia. She tells the villain to try being black and saying whatever he wants to a cop in Brixton to see what happens. She urges Vadim to go. He quickly responds by talking about being dragged away from a climate change demonstration feet first. Vadim follows her into the break room to tell her there were 32,000 retweets at the last count. She tells him that they’re bots and automatic. He asks if she’d like to explain it to him after work, but she walks off without answering. Later, Vadim returns home to see his mother Ludmilla (Janina Elkin). She offers to go get his father Felix (Ed Fleroff).

He asks her not to do that before saying he already has a place to say. Vadim tells her that he is working since he has given up computer science. Instead, he has enrolled at the Academy of Arts. Although he needs money for the course, he is going to be an artist. His mom says it is like him to try art today and something else tomorrow. She asks if he is any good at it because he was good at computer science. Ludmilla asks why he keeps changing. She reminds him that he can work with his father if he needs money. At work, the supervisor tells them that is enough for today and they’ll begin at 11 AM tomorrow. Before Vadim goes, he posts a Tweet about people in the UK having no jobs and houses because they’ve let in thousands of refugees. Someone responds back asking about Ukraine, Novichok, and gay rights.

When he learns it wasn’t his coworker, he asks the person about Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ireland which were worse. Kathy Freeman (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) comments about the healthcare in the UK compared to Russia. The supervisor tells Vadim to end it because this is British intelligence. He says you’ll learn to spot them over time. Kathy sends Vadim an email after the conversation ends to say they know who he is and they’re tracking his work. He tries to find the supervisor and instead finds the young girl doing something that appears to be downloading files to an external hard drive. As they leave, she says Novi Golos or New Voice. The anti-Putin website sent her in there because she is writing a story for them about what they’re doing. They’re terrified of journalists since that place doesn’t officially exist. He’d be arrested if they found out.

Vadim thought she believed in what they were doing, but she detests everything about it as well as the corruption and cynicism. She believes he is going to turn her in because his father is an arms dealer. Vadim says he won’t and he isn’t his father. Marina (Tinatin Dalakishvili) invites Vadim back to her apartment. He helps her get the door open so she can put her daughter down for the night. He looks at the photos in the apartment and learns they were taken by Mina’s father who was a photo reporter and died during the Ukraine war. She makes him some soup that he doesn’t like. Marina says her father worked in the gas fields, but he died. Her mother and grandmother raised her. They worked at Irkut which is an aircraft manufacturer.

They were strong women who taught her self-sufficiency. She admits it wasn’t much of a childhood. Vadim tells her that he doesn’t like the soup. She admits she needs to go to sleep so she asks him to go. Marina promises she isn’t offended because she knows she is a bad cook. She wonders why Vadim is working at that dump when he doesn’t need to since his mom has people cooking for her. He explains that he wants to be a painter and needs money to pay for the course. He isn’t sure why he is bothering because his parents will just find a way to stop him in the end. Marina calls him a poor little rich boy. She kisses him on his way out. As Vadim walks home, he is kidnapped by two men who lock him in a room moments later. Felix learns about his son’s kidnapping. He meets with Boris Leonov (Nikolay Serdtsev) to get help.

An officer breaks in and releases Vadim moments later. Boris meets with him and tells him he is in the headquarters of the FSB. He introduces himself as a friend of his father. When he received the ransom demand, he came to them for help. Vadim is given food and told to relax. He returns home to his father to tell him he is a brilliant programmer so they want him to join the FSB as a hacker. He called it a patriotic act. Although Vadim doesn’t want to do it, Felix believes it is best to do what they ask. When Vadim suggests leaving Russia, he is reminded of what happens to Russian citizens who travel overseas without the blessing of our government. He thinks his father can protect him since they’re friends. His father asks if he has considered his kidnapping and how quickly he was released.

He asks if it has occurred to him that the whole thing could’ve been a put-up job. His father has been trying to stay out of their clutches for years, but now they’ll be able to put pressure on him. Since Felix had to ask them for help, he owes them. They will make sure he repays the debt. None of this would’ve happened if Vadim had just agreed to work with his father. Vadim would never work for him because he despises what he does. His father says that is great since he is working for the FSB now. When Vadim goes to the headquarters of the FSB, Boris introduces him to Misha (Nikita Zabolotny) who also lived in England. Misha tells him to take off his tie since no one wears them around here. Later, Vadim takes Marina and her daughter to the zoo. They get home and have sex.

Marina admits it doesn’t matter what she thinks about him working there. They got him out and this is the price he’ll have to pay. She is still working at Glavset because she is on assignment for Novi Golos. She has been friends with the editor since university and they set it up together. Marina was crazy back then because she has nothing to lose, but she can’t take those risks now that she has Mina. It was a mistake to take the assignment and it turns out she is just as bad a parent as her mother. Vadim doesn’t believe that because she is a wonderful mother and Mina adores her. Marina recommends making it up with his father. She can imagine what it’d feel like to be cut off from her daughter. Vadim is adamant that this will never happen.

He meets with Misha at work as he is instructed to not say much and just listen. He joins them as they begin watching surveillance video from the Security Operations Centre at BT Openreach in London. He is told that the UK’s Internet is controlled by two companies, BT Openreach and Virgin Media. On April 12th of next year, they’re going to shut down part of it. Backdoors are already in place and they’re just building the payloads right now. Vadim will be joining the Openreach team. It is the highest level of security so he cannot discuss his job with anyone or post about it anywhere. They have safeguards in place to ensure the workers abide by these requirements. Later, Vadim asks Misha how they did that because it is crazy. Misha tells him to just wait.

During a bigger meeting, they’re told they’ll be degrading the capability and resolve of their enemy in the first phase. They’re also discrediting their institutions and leadership with the aid of espionage, assassination, manipulation of social media, and cyberattacks. The aim is to create confusion, dissatisfaction, and chaos. By the time the war is officially declared, the enemy’s ability to defend himself will be significantly reduced. In the next phase, they will engineer the enemy’s strategic situation by fatally undermining his relationships with his allies. When they attack, the enemy will be isolated and stand absolutely alone. The war will be won using a technique called reflexive control to predetermine the enemy’s behavior in Russia’s favor. The objective is the total defeat of the enemy. Then, information operations are used to ensure the enemy has to take each step that they need them to.

It is also used to make the enemy think the decision is his own even though it has been predetermined by Russia. While working, Vadim finds that something is missing. He says there is a reference to modules checked into the source repo, but there are no modules. He mentions a reverse shell handler. Misha tells him to just forget about them and it won’t be left like that. Although Vadim doesn’t smoke, he goes outside with Misha anyway and learns they’re the B team. The A team includes the people writing those missing modules. Misha doesn’t know who they are or if they’re even in the same building. He has worked here for three years but has never seen them. They don’t ask questions about the modules or what they’ll do. Nobody knows if the modules are more damaging than theirs, but Misha doesn’t think they’d be secretive otherwise.

Later, Vadim wants to ask Marina something, but he’ll have to tell her things she shouldn’t know. He explains that they’re building two cyberattacks with one hidden in the other. The first one does a lot of damage. He says they can analyze the code and find the second one before it goes off since it isn’t hidden carefully enough. He tells her about the other team that is building a third attack that will be hidden in the others. They’re trying to provoke a war and openly talk about it in their lectures. They’re attacking a country that is part of NATO and America will come to their aid so it could end up destroying the entire world. She recommends sabotaging the code, but Vadim doesn’t think that would work since they check it every day. Marina says he could warn them about the third attack by sending a message.

When he doesn’t like that idea, she instructs him to set up a face-to-face meeting by giving them a time and place. He approaches Yevgeny (Ernest Gromov) at work to talk about the Cyberworld Conference. Vadim is told to send him an email if he wants to go. He uses what3words to come up with “eagles summer stages” that is eventually encrypted and added to the code. He deletes it and doesn’t go through with it. On April 12, 2024, the team gathers to watch the first cyberattack. Misha tells him that they’re watching GCHQ too. Everyone begins cheering when the computers turn off. As Vadim watches the surveillance video, he notices Saara sitting alone.

Vadim asks Misha how to access the feed from the workstation since he needs to check on something. He watches Saara standing next to Max as they discuss the current situation. Vadim encrypts the words again and adds the message to the code. When he returns to Misha, he tells him that he left something in the code from the intrusion set, but VPNed back in to delete it. He says they didn’t even notice because they’re so busy over there. On Tuesday, April 23, GCHQ launches a retaliatory attack on Glavset. The supervisor tells Marina and the others that they were the victims of a cyberattack, but everything is being done to restore access. The office will be closed until then and they won’t be able to promise they’ll keep their jobs.

Vadim offers to help her, but she wants to pay her own way. She gets a call from someone asking about her name. She meets with the woman who shows her the article about Glavset and asks if she wrote it. The woman asks how she’d feel about moving to London as a reporter for Russia Global News. She is told the package would cover relocation costs and there are generous allowances. They can even cover Mina’s education in Britain. Marina asks why Russia Global News would want her when the article was very critical of the government. She can’t answer that since it was the London editor’s request. Later, Marina tells Vadim about it. He can’t believe it since Russia Global News is Putin’s propaganda and can’t understand how she’d consider working for such a disgusting organization.

She reminds him that he is working for the FSB and they met in a place known for certain propaganda. Vadim kisses her before admitting that he is in love with her. He believes she loves him too although she will never admit it. She tells him that he can see them when he goes to Harrogate even though he is only going for three days. He isn’t sure if they got the message he sent. When he goes to Harrogate, he checks into Cyberworld using a false name. He meets with Saara to tell her there is something hidden that they haven’t found yet. He says she needs to find it in the malware before it activates. He goes on to argue she can stop a war by finding it. Saara says he hasn’t given her anything to go on. Vadim is glad it is her because he is putting his life in her hands.

He asks her not to mention his name to anyone since they’ll kill him if they find out he did this.

 

The Undeclared War Review

The third episode of The Undeclared War was likely the best since German Segal’s Vadim is a much more interesting character than Saara or Kathy. Everything that happened in Russia was entertaining and enlightening although some things felt like poor propaganda. The Twitter stuff was more humorous than frightening, but that may be because it was just glanced over.

We only saw two sides and not the impact it could have on UK citizens. It would be nice if this was a little less one-sided since it seems like the viewer is expected to believe everything bad at home is just Russian propaganda.

It was also never explained how Kathy somehow knew who Vadim was and what he was doing or how she managed to email him so easily. Whether it was possible or likely that Vadim would go back in and change the code to send a message to Saara can be debated.

Still, Vadim and Marina’s stories were very interesting making this the best episode of The Undeclared War yet. It scores a 6.5 out of 10. Recaps of The Undeclared War can be found on Reel Mockery here. Find out how to support our work by following this link.