Shortly before the Obama administration approved a deal granting Russia 20% of America's uranium, US intelligence agencies discovered that the Kremlin had "dramatically improved their ability to decrypt certain types of secure communications and had successfully tracked devices used by elite FBI surveillance teams," according to Yahoo News, which interviewed 50 current and former intelligence and national security officials. 

In September 2011, Vladimir Putin announced the launch of his third presidential campaign, only to be confronted during the following months by tens of thousands of protesters accusing him of electoral fraud. Putin, a former intelligence officer, publicly accused then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of fomenting the unrest.

It was around this time that Putin's spies in the United States, operating under diplomatic cover, achieved what a former senior intelligence official called a "stunning" technical breakthrough, demonstrating their relentless focus on the country they've long considered their primary adversary. -Yahoo News