Spy Games Expulsion Of Diplomats Shines Light On Russian Espionage Espionage

Sir John Sawers, the former head of the M16, said last year that he suspected the West was taking over only 10% of Russian espionage. The current scale of the exodus of alleged Russian spies – possibly the largest single series of such deportations in history, according to prominent former French diplomat François Heisburg – may also raise questions about why the West began to indulge in so many “double Russians.” working in European territory. As of Friday, among the EU member states, only Malta, Cyprus and Hungary had so far refused to send suitcases to Russian “diplomats”. Heisburg insisted that there was a clear and valid distinction between a diplomat and a spy, and that those deported from Europe would not be chosen at random, but because there was evidence that they were violating the Vienna Convention, the code governing legal diplomacy. In addition to espionage, this could also include spreading misinformation on social media. “If you spend your time texting on Twitter insulting the government of the host nation, if you follow the diplomacy of the ‘wolf warrior’ undertaken by Chinese diplomats, that may fall within the definition of making you a persona non grata,” Heisbourg said. Heisburg said there was art to the deportations. “Obviously, it ‘s easier to track a spy you know than a spy you do not know. Once you know they exist, they become useful counterintelligence. “If you do not know who they are, you have a problem.” He recalled that during the so-called Farewell Case in the 1980s, a KGB insurgent, Vladimir Vetrov, gave nearly 4,000 secret documents to the DST, the French internal secret service, showing how Russia had infiltrated the West to steal its technology. . Vetrov also provided a list of 250 intelligence officers stationed under legal cover at embassies around the world. Only after Vetrov was arrested in Moscow did France, acting on the basis of the files provided by Vetrov, act to deport 40 diplomats, two journalists and five business officials. Heisburg played a role in handling the case, recalling: “Even then, it was useful to keep some names behind, so we had a list A and a list B that we kept in reserve in case the Russians took compensatory measures. “We made it known to the Russians that if they made a glove for tat, they would hit it many times bigger.” Since the 1980s, Heisburg said he had no doubt that the percentage of spies operating in the Russian diplomatic service was higher than in most countries. It raises questions, for example, as to why 290 Russian diplomats will continue to operate in neutral Austria even after the expulsion of four diplomats from the Foreign Ministry, after days of hesitation. By comparison, Austria has about 30 diplomats working in Moscow. It is true that large countries have larger embassies – a typical example being the US embassy in Baghdad – and some of the Russian diplomats in Vienna – probably 100 – are attached to many UN institutions in Austria, such as the IAEA. But the imbalance of Russian and Austrian interest in each other’s countries is, at best, striking. Poland may also be wondering in retrospect why, after deporting 45 diplomats on March 23, it has never granted diplomatic status to so many Russians in the first place. Stanisław Żaryn, the minister’s spokesman for the special services coordinator, justified the deportations by saying “we are neutralizing the network of Russian special services in our country”, adding that half of the deported diplomats were Russian secret service operatives and engaged in operations of hostile influence. Stanisław Żaryn, the Polish minister’s spokesman for the special services coordinator, announces the deportation of 45 Russian diplomats on March 23. Photo: Paweł Supernak / EPA “Russia is using diplomacy not to keep in touch with partners, but to promote false allegations and propaganda statements against the West,” Zarrin said. In all, the 45 Russians deported represent about half of the Russian diplomatic staff in Warsaw. Poland also saw deportations as a precautionary measure. The risk of espionage had increased with the sudden influx of Ukrainians into Poland, potentially fertile ground for Russia to provoke dissent, recruit agents, or obtain information from refugees about military moves. Russia, Żaryn claimed, intended to “create animosity within Poland against Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia.” Poland now occupies old, unused Russian embassy buildings in Warsaw. Two other countries at the forefront of heavy arms supplies to Ukraine – Slovakia and the Czech Republic – have also recently been at the forefront of espionage with Moscow. On March 30, Bratislava deported 35 diplomats, one of the largest single deportations on the current wave. Just a fortnight ago, on March 14, Slovakia arrested four people suspected of spying for Moscow and deported three Russian diplomats in response. Russia had paid the suspects “tens of thousands of euros” for sensitive or confidential information. The quality of this information is questionable, but one of the two men charged was the rector and head of the security and defense department at the Armed Forces Academy in the northern city of Liptovsky Mikulas. It has been reported that there were details of contacts with four officers working for the Russian military intelligence service GRU dating back to 2013. One of them was Lt. Col. Sergey Solomasov, a GRU spy. The Slovak intelligence service filmed Solomasov smoking and talking in a park with Bohuš Garbár, an associate of the now-closed Hlavné Správy conspiracy site. In the video, he tells Garbár: “Moscow has decided that you will be a ‘hunter’ for two types of people: those who love Russia and want to cooperate, who want money and have confidential information. The second group is your acquaintances who may or may not be thinking of working for Russia. “I need political information and communication between the countries, within NATO and the EU.” The series may not be pure Iman Fleming’s prose, but in an age of technology-based espionage, spies are still dependent on the greed and deceit of a secular person. GRU agents Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were linked to the poisoning and sabotage of Salisbury novichok in Czech weapons depots. Photo: Metropolitan Police / PA The Czechs also have reason to doubt the Russian diplomat’s good faith. In 2014 a mysterious but huge explosion occurred in some remote Czech weapons depots, including one in Vrbětice near the border with Slovakia, which resulted in two deaths. At the time, Ukraine was in the arms market to fight Russia in Donbas. It was not clear if the cause of the explosions was sabotage or incompetence and the case went cold. Subsequently, however, investigations by British police, as well as the Bellingcat open source investigative news agency, revealed the identities of two suspected GRU agents. The two were Ruslan Boshirov (real name Anatoliy Chepiga) and Alexander Petrov (Alexander Mishkin). Exactly the same nicknames were reportedly given by two Russians who visited a hotel near Vrbětice shortly before the 2014 explosion. Sources said the planned arms shipments belonged to EMCO, a company owned by Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev. who was poisoned in a luxury restaurant in Sofia in April 2015, a few months after the explosion in the Czech Republic. A 2019 investigation by Bellingcat claimed that another senior GRU officer, Denis Sergeev (also known as “Sergey Fedotov”), was in Bulgaria at the time of Gebrev’s poisoning, from which he survived. Sergeyev is also said to have been in the United Kingdom at the time of the Novichok poisoning attacks on Sergei and Julia Skripal in Salisbury. None of these activities, the Czechs concluded, would have taken place without the knowledge of the Russian state. In April last year, then-Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš ordered the deportation of 18 Russian diplomats, claiming that the GRU 29155 unit was behind the weapons destruction. Russia retaliated by expelling 20 Czechs, only the Czechs increased the deportations to 60, equalizing the size of the two countries’ diplomatic missions. It was one of the largest deportations of Russian diplomats since Ronald Reagan ousted 80 diplomats in 1986 at the height of the Cold War. Prague has often been described as a hub for Russian espionage throughout Europe, but no longer. Unsurprisingly, after the 2021 diplomatic massacre, the Czechs deported only one Russian diplomat this spring. In the same vein, Heisburg said, most European countries do not criticize Britain for failing to deport diplomats in the wake of the “Bucha massacre.” Following the expulsion of 29 Russian diplomats in the wake of the Scripal poisoning in 2019, the Russian embassy in London is relatively clean and the UK is reluctant to take a step that would see even more Russian-speaking envoys being sent – resource. house from Moscow. But the contrast between the UK and Europe’s reaction was striking. Following the revelation of the war crimes in Bucha, Germany deported 40 Russian diplomats, France 35, Spain 25, Slovenia 33, Italy – which had expelled two Russian spies in 2021 – selected another 30. France for mysterious reasons then expelled six other diplomats. Lithuania…