Suspects from shadowy agency that specialises in ‘war-fighting’
Sergei Skripal was poisoned by agents of the same shadowy but buccaneering Russian intelligence agency he served in and betrayed decades ago, British authorities claimed yesterday.
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, named as suspects in his attempted murder and of his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, are agents of the GRU, the Russian ministry of defence’s elite intelligence and special forces arm, Theresa May told the House of Commons yesterday.
There is barely any information available about the pair, they are almost certainly commissioned Russian military officers highly trained in covert operations, espionage and assassination.
After releasing photographs of the two well-built men in their 40s, police said they were travelling under aliases.
Fontanka, an independent Russian news agency, reported that the men’s passports were issued in 2016 and that they travelled to Amsterdam, Geneva, Milan and went several times to Paris before their trip to Salisbury, but offered no confirmation for the claim.
The site also claimed a man called Ruslan Boshirov – an unusual surname – was born in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, was registered at an address in Moscow, and was issued with two parking tickets in 2015.
But there is nothing to suggest that is the man who landed at Gatwick airport on March 2. And even less is known about his accomplice ‘‘Alexander Petrov,’’ as common as John Smith.
On paper, the GRU, or Main Intelligence Directorate, combines two roles – an intelligence branch, roughly the equivalent of Britain’s Defence Intelligence department, and the Spetsnaz brigades, the Russian version of the SAS and SBS.
But unlike the FSB and SVR, the domestic and overseas spy agencies that emerged from the break-up of the KGB, it has never been a civilian outfit.
And its bat-and-globe emblem embodies a military ethos that has put it at the spearhead of the Kremlin’s boldest and bloodiest covert operations of recent years.
‘‘The GRU essentially thinks of itself as a war-fighting agency, and it combines covert intelligence work with special forces mindsets,’’ said Mark Galleotti, an expert on Russian intelligence agencies.
‘‘That makes it more of a risktaking organisation than its counterparts – it is more important for them to take a chance than worry about the risks.’’
Recruitment to the agency is strictly via the armed forces, and those who get in are part of a hand-picked elite.
‘‘It is impossible to volunteer for the GRU, you can only be invited,’’ said Boris Volodarsky, a long-serving former GRU officer. The usual career route sees a promising commissioned officer recommended for selection by a superior. The candidate then goes before a vetting commission, and if approved is enrolled in the Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, where he will spend up to four years studying tradecraft before being joining the agency’s intelligence arm.
They might then go on to serve as military attaches in foreign embassies, recruit spies to glean information from other countries’ military plans, or plan complex special operations.
Skripal was recruited into the agency after serving as a Soviet paratrooper officer in the Seventies and Eighties and was posted to the military attaches’ officers at embassies in Malta and Spain, according to British and Russian media reports.
But he betrayed the agency when he was recruited to be a British double agent in the Nineties – handing MI6 the names of dozens of key agents.
There is a slightly different career path for the Spetsnaz, which also come under the GRU umbrella.
Their work is elite warfighting rather than intelligence, and soldiers go through gruelling training regimes similar to other special forces. They have been deeply involved in Russia’s semicovert military campaigns in Syria and Ukraine.
It is not clear which branch Petrov and Boshirov served in. But Volodarsky said it was the GRU intelligence branch, not the special forces commandos, who would be in charge of a delicate, non-battlefield assassination against a target like Skripal.