ANALYSIS – After being severely reduced by Western actions over the past two years, former spymaster Vladimir Putin has aggressively boosted both the size and influence of Russia's GRU military intelligence, SVR foreign intelligence agency and the foreign branch of the FSB Federal Security Service.
Bulgaria, Slovakia, Albania, Holland, Germany, Sweden and Norway have all arrested Russian agents and spies working for either the GRU or SVR.
Their focus seems to be on Western military aid going to Ukraine, but information warfare, sabotage and targeted killings of defectors in Europe are also becoming hot missions for the Kremlin.
“Intelligence experts told The Sun that Europe needs to wake up to threat of a vengeful Kremlin boss that ‘no longer has anything to lose.'” One of those experts, Dr Kristian Gustafson, from Brunel University, noted that Russia is no longer acting with constraint.
Russia's spy networks in Europe fit into three main categories: Declared agents working at foreign embassies posing as diplomats; undeclared agents, such as trade delegations and illegals working undercover, passing themselves off as from another country other than Russia.
Most of the Russian spies that were expelled last year were Russian intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover in Europe.
As Politico reported:
In what Ken McCallum, the head of Britain's security service MI5, dubbed the “most significant strategic blow” against Moscow in recent intelligence history, more than 400 so-called undeclared intelligence officers have been drummed out of Europe since the invasion of Ukraine, including from France, Belgium and Germany, dramatically reducing the Kremlin's reach and ability to spy in Europe.
With so many of Russia's intelligence agents kicked out of embassies in European capitals in the last 18 months, the Kremlin has resorted to other methods to keep its spy networks alive.
Politico continued:
Darius Jauniškis, director of Lithuania's State Security Department, said “Russian intelligence services are seeking to restore or create new opportunities for their intelligence activities in Europe,” and they are exploring “other intelligence gathering methods: cyber, non-traditional cover, online operations.”
According to Jauniškis, Europe's critical infrastructure is a key target for Russian intelligence gathering — the priority being to monitor “the production and supply of Western arms to Ukraine” — and Russia has been on recruitment drives where and when it can.
“The FSB, for example, has an external department, and its role has been expanding, so it is in charge of operations in Ukraine, where it now has a huge presence,” explains Ryhor Nizhnikau, a Russia expert at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
On February 12, France, Poland and Germany accused the GRU of spreading pro-Russian propaganda over the Ukraine invasion through Portal Kombat, a network of 193 fake news websites. Two weeks before that, the European parliament opened a probe into whether a Latvian MEP might be an agent for the FSB.
Poland earlier announced it had dismantled a Russian-run spy ring which had been hiding cameras on rail routes to monitor Western weapons deliveries bound for Ukraine. Some sources suggested that the group had entered from Belarus and Belarusians were among them.
More concerning, the arrested spies were based near the Rzeszów-Jasionka military airport, and according to Poland's Defense Minister, were preparing to “sabotage actions aimed at paralyzing the supply of equipment, weapons and aid to Ukraine.”
The recent leaked phone conversation between German Air Force chief Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz and officers discussing sending Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine may be Moscow's most explosive propaganda coup so far this year.
Meanwhile, most brazenly, Russian kill squads are roaming and assassinating freely throughout Europe.
As The Sun reported:
Whether it is elaborate poisonings or a straight up bullet to the head, the Russian tyrant, 71, has a shameless track record of using professional kill-squads to do his brutal bidding outside of his borders.
But increasingly he doesn't seem to give a damn about who knows.
Last month, the bullet-riddled body of a young Russian military helicopter pilot who defected to Ukraine, Captain Maxim Kuzminov, 28, was found in Alicante, Spain.
Earlier, The Sun noted: “Oligarch Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged after allegedly axing to death his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria, as they slept at their luxury villa on the Costa Brava.”
Most analysts believe the triple killing in southern Spain was staged by Kremlin agents.
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