Generalmajor
Det tycks ha varit en ren slump att västerländska underrättelse-
källor 2012 upptäckte att tre hittills topphemliga GRU-enheter
tilldelats utmärkelser för "särskilda militära insatser" och
generösa ekonomiska belöningar:
Enhet 99450 dök upp igen som huvudansvariga för
ockupationen av Krim och östra Ukraina.
Enhet 74455 utpekades nyligen som ansvarigt för cyber--
attacker mot amerikanska valrörelser.
Enhet 29155 framstår som något slags "super-Spetznaz",
bemannad av erfarna officerare från olika specialtrupper,
som opererar mot Västerlandet..
“They were serious guys who served there,” the retired officer said.
“They were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”
First came a
destabilization campaign in Moldova, followed by the poisoning of an
arms dealer in Bulgaria and then a thwarted coup in Montenegro. Last
year, there was an attempt to assassinate a former Russian spy
in Britain using a nerve agent. Though the operations bore the
fingerprints of Russia’s intelligence services, the authorities
initially saw them as isolated, unconnected attacks.
Western
security officials have now concluded that these operations, and
potentially many others, are part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign
to destabilize Europe, executed by an elite unit inside the Russian
intelligence system skilled in subversion, sabotage and assassination.
The
group, known as Unit 29155, has operated for at least a decade, yet
Western officials only recently discovered it. Intelligence officials in
four Western countries say it is unclear how often the unit is
mobilized and warn that it is impossible to know when and where its
operatives will strike.
The purpose of
Unit 29155, which has not been previously reported, underscores the
degree to which the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, is actively fighting the West
with his brand of so-called hybrid warfare — a blend of propaganda,
hacking attacks and disinformation — as well as open military
confrontation.
“I
think we had forgotten how organically ruthless the Russians could be,”
said Peter Zwack, a retired military intelligence officer and former
defense attaché at the United States Embassy in Moscow, who said he was
not aware of the unit’s existence.
In a
text message, Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, directed
questions about the unit to the Russian Defense Ministry. The ministry
did not respond to requests for comment.
Though
much about G.R.U. operations remains a mystery, Western intelligence
agencies have begun to get a clearer picture of its underlying
architecture. In the months before the 2016 presidential election,
American officials say two G.R.U. cyber units, known as 26165 and 74455,
hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the
Clinton campaign, and then published embarrassing internal
communications.
Last year, Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, indicted more than a dozen officers
from those units, though all still remain at large. The hacking teams
mostly operate from Moscow, thousands of miles from their targets.
By
contrast, officers from Unit 29155 travel to and from European
countries. Some are decorated veterans of Russia’s bloodiest wars,
including in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine. Its operations are so
secret, according to assessments by Western intelligence services, that
the unit’s existence is most likely unknown even to other G.R.U.
operatives.
The unit appears to be a
tight-knit community. A photograph taken in 2017 shows the unit’s
commander, Maj. Gen. Andrei V. Averyanov, at his daughter’s wedding in a
gray suit and bow tie. He is posing with Col. Anatoly V. Chepiga, one
of two officers indicted in Britain over the poisoning of a former spy,
Sergei V. Skripal.
But
officials began to grasp the unit’s specific agenda of disruption only
after the March 2018 poisoning of Mr. Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer
who had betrayed Russia by spying for the British. Mr. Skripal and his
daughter, Yulia, fell grievously ill after exposure to a highly toxic nerve agent, but survived.
(Three other people were sickened, including a police officer and a man who found a small bottle that British officials believe was used to carry the nerve agent and gave it to his girlfriend. The girlfriend, Dawn Sturgess, died after spraying the nerve agent on her skin, mistaking the bottle for perfume.)
The
poisoning led to a geopolitical standoff, with more than 20 nations,
including the United States, expelling 150 Russian diplomats in a show
of solidarity with Britain.
Ultimately,
the British authorities exposed two suspects, who had traveled under
aliases but were later identified by the investigative site Bellingcat
as Colonel Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin. Six months after the
poisoning, British prosecutors charged both men with transporting the nerve agent to Mr. Skripal’s home in Salisbury, England, and smearing it on his front door.
Exactly
a year before the poisoning, three Unit 29155 operatives traveled to
Britain, possibly for a practice run, two European officials said. One
was Mr. Mishkin. A second man used the alias Sergei Pavlov. Intelligence
officials believe the third operative, who used the alias Sergei
Fedotov, oversaw the mission.
Soon,
officials established that two of these officers — the men using the
names Fedotov and Pavlov — had been part of a team that attempted to poison the Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev
in 2015. (The other operatives, also known only by their aliases,
according to European intelligence officials, were Ivan Lebedev, Nikolai
Kononikhin, Alexey Nikitin and Danil Stepanov.)
The team would twice try to kill Mr. Gebrev, once in Sofia, the capital, and again a month later at his home on the Black Sea.
Speaking
to reporters in February at the Munich Security Conference, Alex
Younger, the chief of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, spoke
out against the growing Russian threat and hinted at coordination,
without mentioning a specific unit.
“You
can see there is a concerted program of activity — and, yes, it does
often involve the same people,” Mr. Younger said, pointing specifically
to the Skripal poisoning and the Montenegro coup attempt. He added: “We
assess there is a standing threat from the G.R.U. and the other Russian
intelligence services and that very little is off limits.”
The Kremlin sees Russia as being at war with a Western liberal order that it views as an existential threat.
At a ceremony in November
for the G.R.U.’s centenary, Mr. Putin stood beneath a glowing backdrop
of the agency’s logo — a red carnation and an exploding grenade — and
described it as “legendary.” A former intelligence officer himself, Mr.
Putin drew a direct line between the Red Army spies who helped defeat
the Nazis in World War II and officers of the G.R.U., whose “unique
capabilities” are now deployed against a different kind of enemy.
“Unfortunately,
the potential for conflict is on the rise in the world,” Mr. Putin said
during the ceremony. “Provocations and outright lies are being used and
attempts are being made to disrupt strategic parity.”
Unit 29155 is not the only group authorized to carry out such operations, officials said. The British authorities have attributed Mr. Litvinenko’s killing to the Federal Security Service, the intelligence agency once headed by Mr. Putin that often competes with the G.R.U.
Although
little is known about Unit 29155 itself, there are clues in public
Russian records that suggest links to the Kremlin’s broader hybrid
strategy.
A 2012 directive from the
Russian Defense Ministry assigned bonuses to three units for “special
achievements in military service.” One was Unit 29155. Another was Unit
74455, which was involved in the 2016 election interference. The third
was Unit 99450, whose officers are believed to have been involved in the
annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
A retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 said that it specialized in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.”
A retired G.R.U. officer with knowledge of Unit 29155 said that it specialized in preparing for “diversionary” missions, “in groups or individually — bombings, murders, anything.”
“They
were serious guys who served there,” the retired officer said. “They
were officers who worked undercover and as international agents.”
Photographs
of the unit’s dilapidated former headquarters, which has since been
abandoned, show myriad gun racks with labels for an assortment of
weapons, including Belgian FN-30 sniper rifles, German G3A3s, Austrian
Steyr AUGs and American M16s. There was also a form outlining a training
regimen, including exercises for hand-to-hand combat. The retired
G.R.U. officer confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, which were
published by a Russian blogger.
The
current commander, General Averyanov, graduated in 1988 from the
Tashkent Military Academy in what was then the Soviet Republic of
Uzbekistan. It is likely that he would have fought in both the first and
second Chechen wars, and he was awarded a Hero of Russia medal, the
country’s highest honor, in January 2015. The two officers charged with
the Skripal poisoning also received the same award.
Though
an elite force, the unit appears to operate on a shoestring budget.
According to Russian records, General Averyanov lives in a run-down
Soviet-era building a few blocks from the unit’s headquarters and drives
a 1996 VAZ 21053, a rattletrap Russia-made sedan. Operatives often
share cheap accommodation to economize while on the road. British
investigators say the suspects in the Skripal poisoning stayed in a
low-cost hotel in Bow, a downtrodden neighborhood in East London.
But
European security officials are also perplexed by the apparent
sloppiness in the unit’s operations. Mr. Skripal survived the
assassination attempt, as did Mr. Gebrev, the Bulgarian arms dealer. The
attempted coup in Montenegro drew an enormous amount of attention, but
ultimately failed. A year later, Montenegro joined NATO. It is possible,
security officials say, that they have yet to discover other, more
successful operations.
It is difficult to know if the messiness has bothered the Kremlin. Perhaps, intelligence experts say, it is part of the Point.
“That
kind of intelligence operation has become part of the psychological
warfare,” said Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former intelligence chief in
Estonia. “It’s not that they have become that much more aggressive. They
want to be felt. It’s part of the game.”
