West accuses Russian spy agency GRU of scores of attacks
THE UNITED States and other Western nations levelled a torrent of new allegations against Moscow’s secretive GRU military spy agency yesterday, accusing its agents of hacking anti-doping agencies, plane crash investigations and a chemical weapons probe, as well as launching cyberattacks that rocked America’s 2016 election and crippled Ukraine in 2017.
The roll-call of GRU malfeasance began at midnight in Britain, when British and Australian authorities accused the Russian agency of being behind the catastrophic cyberattack that caused billions in losses to Ukraine in June 2017 and a host of other hacks, including the Democratic Party email leaks and online cyber propaganda that sowed havoc before Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election.
DUTCH ACCUSATIONS
Yesterday, Dutch defence officials broadcast photos and a timeline of GRU agents’ botched attempt to break into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) using Wi-Fi hacking equipment hidden in the back of a sedan. The chemical weapons watchdog was investigating a Novichok nerve-agent attack on a former GRU spy, Sergei Skripal, that Britain has blamed on the Russian government. Moscow has denied the charge.
The Dutch also accused the Russian agency of trying to hack into the investigation of the 2014 downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine that killed all 298 people on board. A Dutchled investigation team says it has strong evidence that the Buk missile that brought the plane down came from a Russia-based military unit. Russia has denied the charge.
Then came the US government’s turn, with the US Justice Department charging seven Russian GRU intelligence officers – including the four nabbed in The Hague – of an international hacking rampage that targeted more than 250 athletes, a nuclear energy company, and a Swiss chemical laboratory.
US Defence Secretary James Mattis said the West has “a wide variety of responses” available.
“Basically, the Russians got caught with their equipment, people who were doing it, and they have got to pay the piper. They are going to have to be held to account,” Mattis said, speaking in Brussels, where he was meeting with NATO allies.
Moscow issued more denials yesterday, but the allegations levelled by Western intelligence agencies, supported by a wealth of surveillance footage and overwhelmingly confirmed by independent reporting, painted a picture of the GRU as an agency that routinely crosses red lines and is increasingly being caught red-handed around the world.
The US indictment said the GRU targeted its victims because they had publicly supported a ban on Russian athletes in international sports competitions and because they had condemned Russia’s statesponsored athlete-doping programme. US prosecutors said the Russians also targeted a Pennsylvania-based nuclear energy company and the OPCW, which was investigating possible war crimes in Syria and the March poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
The US indictment says the seven defendants are all Russian citizens and residents. They include four GRU agents expelled last spring from the Netherlands.