Unit 29155

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Unit 29155 is a special unit of the Glawnoje Raswedywatelnoje Uprawlenije (GRU), the Russian military secret service specializing in assassinations abroad and destabilizing states. The unit was established in 2008. Their existence and part of their activities became known in 2019 through research by the New York Times based on Western intelligence sources.

The unit is led by Major General Andrei Averyanov .

activities

The first documented activities of Unit 29155 included the destabilization of the Republic of Moldova in 2014 and a failed coup in Montenegro in 2016, including attempts to assassinate the Prime Minister and occupy parliament by force. The poison attack on defector Sergei Viktorovich Skripal, who lives in Great Britain, and his daughter in March 2018 were also attributed to this unit, as was the murder of Chechen Selimchan Changoshvili on the street in Berlin in August 2019.

Western security services concluded during 2019 that these and possibly numerous other operations are part of a coordinated ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe. For this purpose, this elite unit was established within the Russian secret service system, which is trained in subversion, sabotage and assassination. At the official political level, too, the Kremlin supports - and partly finances - numerous exponents of right-wing parties and movements in the EU, coming from the AfD , Rassemblement National , Lega Nord , Jobbik and FPÖ , a so-called Black International , like Russian bloggers the network Putins called. The common intersection is the intention to weaken, damage or even destroy the European Union . Massive Russian influence has meanwhile also been demonstrated during Brexit and the independence referendum in Catalonia in 2017 .

In December 2019, the French daily Le Monde reported , citing French intelligence contacts, that 15 members of unit 29155 had visited the Haute-Savoie department between 2014 and 2018 . Haute-Savoie is located in the French Alps and borders Switzerland and Italy. Among the visitors were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, both suspected of poisoning their father and daughter Skripal.

Structure and method

The research of the New York Times (NYT), the German news magazine Der Spiegel , the research platforms Bellingcat and The Insider showed the following picture: Unit 29155 consists of around twenty former soldiers, graduates of respected military academies, late thirties to mid forties, experienced in combat, for example in Chechnya or Ukraine . Some of them served in special forces in the military.

The methodology of unit 29155 was described in the NYT as "sloppy" and "messy" (sloppy, messy). Several actions had to be abandoned unsuccessfully, such as the coup in Montenegro, which was staged before the country joined NATO , and in several cases so much evidence was left behind that it was possible to identify the perpetrators. Security experts wondered whether this method was not chosen on purpose to signal to all Russian opponents of the regime that they were nowhere safe. Eerik-Niiles Kross , former intelligence chief in Estonia, believes that this type of intelligence operation has now become part of psychological warfare .

reaction

On the Russian side, these allegations were described as "hysteria" as was the allegation of Russian influence on the 2016 election campaign in the United States .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Michael Schwirtz: Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say . Ed .: The New York Times . October 8, 2019, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed December 11, 2019]).
  2. ↑ a b c d Shadow Warriors of the Kremlin. In: N. 50/2019. Der Spiegel , pp. 40–45 , accessed on December 11, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The Times (London): Smersh spy-killers are back in business , Report by Ben Macintyre, December 6, 2019
  4. ^ Der Spiegel (Hamburg): Russia's right-wing friends , report by Benjamin Bidder, February 4, 2016
  5. ↑ TIME (New York): Leaked Report on Russian Interference in Brexit Vote Raises Questions Ahead of UK Elections , November 17, 2019
  6. ↑ a b The Moscow Times : Spain Probes Russia's Role in Catalonia Referendum - El Pais , November 22, 2019
  7. ↑ Darko Janjevic: Russia posted GRU agents in French Alps for EU ops , Deutsche Welle , December 5, 2019
  8. ^ Charles Bremner: Russian assassins hid out in Alpine ski resorts , The Times (London), December 6, 2019
  9. ^ The Dreadful Eight: GRU's Unit 29155 and the 2015 Poisoning of Emilian Gebrev. In: Bellingcat . November 23, 2019. Retrieved December 11, 2019 (UK English).