A general view shows the headquarters of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formerly known as the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), in Moscow, Russia October 4, 2018. REUTERS/Stringer

Recent revelations that the Russian Armed Forces intelligence service (known as the GRU) was behind the explosion at an arms depot in the Czech Republic that killed two people in October 2014 has sparked a major diplomatic row.

But it also raised questions about what the GRU is capable of, whether it can be stopped and what other operations it may have carried out so far. European intelligence services believe that the mission of a division of the GRU known as Unit 29155 is to carry out sabotage, subversion and assassination operations.

After the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian officer who worked as a double agent for British intelligence, and his daughter Yulia, in the British city of Salisbury in 2018, security services across Europe have been methodically working to track their actions, following the movements of approximately 20 agents who carry out clandestine missions abroad. This shed new light on other events, such as the poisoning of a Bulgarian arms dealer in 2015, as well as the explosion in the Czech Republic.

The unit was also linked to a 2016 coup attempt in Montenegro aimed at preventing the country from moving closer to the western NATO military alliance. The alleged agents were tried and convicted (in absentia) by national courts. French security services established that the unit used a region of the Alps as an advanced base of operations to travel to other countries.

The unit also had some connection to offering rewards to the Taliban for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan, although last week US officials said there was little evidence (low to moderate confidence) about such a relationship.

What is behind these covert operations?

Most of the events uncovered so far took place after 2014. That year, especially with the Ukraine crisis, appears to be the point at which the Kremlin began to find itself at odds with the West, in a conflict that doesn’t happen overtly as in a traditional war, but with methods that are in a “grey area”.

These activities range from new disinformation and internet hacking operations targeting the West (including the action to influence the 2016 US elections), carried out by some units of the GRU, to the creation of Unit 29155 to carry out more traditional covert actions.

Some wonder if the discovery by Western intelligence agencies of what happened in the Czech Republic suggests an oversight in the unit’s work. An example of this is the way two men used the same secret identities (Petrov and Boshirov) for that operation and Salisbury’s.

The Bellingcat research group tracked the way GRU agents sometimes used sequential passport numbers that could be easily linked to each other.

Even so, it took almost seven years for the Czech case to be discovered. And just because a team acted sloppy once doesn’t mean it can’t do serious damage. In the Czech Republic, two people died; and in Salisbury, a local resident was killed by Novichok (the nerve agent used in the Skripal case).

And there may still be more cases to discover. There are other events, including deaths and explosions, that may be reassessed in light of new evidence and linked to this Russian intelligence unit as its members’ travel patterns are analyzed.

What has been crucial is that since Salisbury, more and more countries are willing to work together to share information and confront Moscow, increasingly outraged by what they see as Russia’s aggressive tactics.

In addition to the UK and US, several Eastern European countries such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria have taken recent measures against Russian spies.

But will these revelations serve to stop Russia and the GRU?

That can be difficult, given the way the Kremlin sees the world. Moscow denies all the allegations, saying they are absurd and exaggerated, and does not seem to be concerned about the embarrassment this might bring.

But the hope is that exposing the spies and their operations will make further missions difficult. For example, the two men accused of being involved in Salisbury and the Czech explosion are unlikely to be able to travel outside of Russia, as their identities have been released.

However, others can be trained to take his place, and few believe Moscow will stop using spies.

Source: with agencies