I spy a bumbling spy: Russia’s military spies depicted poorly
PARIS — It seems like open season on the GRU.
The Russian military agency had its inner workings exposed again Friday as determined journalists and Kremlin critics remain focused on uncovering its secrets. A new report details the alleged misbehavior and bizarre bureaucratic decisions that allowed a Russian journalist to identify people he says are GRU officers.
Journalist Sergei Kanev said he wants to call attention to problems within an organization he thinks has moved from traditional spying into unchecked violence and foreign interference. But his story portrays the agency as more sloppy than scary: one finding was that suspected GRU agents appeared to blow their own covers.
None of the few dozen agents he wrote about is suspected of grave wrongdoing. However, governments in multiple countries have implicated GRU agents in the March nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy in Britain, hacking the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, involvement in downing a Malaysian plane and disrupting anti-doping efforts.
Russian authorities deny the accusations.
Kanev said he identified three agents after they filed police reports for stolen goods, by cross-checking names with databases showing addresses or other information on GRU employees. Another was identified after being arrested over a cafe shootout.
The report also says the Russian Defense Ministry sought to conceal the identities of dozens of children of alleged GRU officers living in a Moscow housing complex by adding 100 years to their ages in administrative registries. GRU agents jokingly called it the “old folks’ home,” Kanev said.
However, pension authorities raised alarm upon discovering the concentration of elderly residents, suspecting fraud.
Kanev, who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe, said he uncovered the identities by using databases purchased on the black market from Moscow police, traffic police or security agents. He said he crosschecked them with open sources and discussions with security sources. Other Russian journalists have described using similar methods.
Kanev’s reporting was funded and published by Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Dossier Project, and also released by Russian independent broadcaster Dozhd TV. Russian journalist Sergei Kanev says he wants to call attention to problems within the GRU military agency.
The report couldn’t be immediately verified. But it fits in a pattern of embarrassing exposures that has caused some to question the GRU’s professionalism — and highlighted corruption that has allowed leaks to occur.
Last month, British intelligence released surveillance images of GRUagents accused of the March attack in Salisbury.
Investigative group Bellingcat and Russian site The Insider quickly exposed the agents’ real names. The Associated Press and others revealed details about their backgrounds. And Dutch authorities recently identified four alleged GRU agents who tried to hack the Wi-Fi of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog from a hotel parking lot.
All this makes it look like GRU officers “can’t tie their own shoelaces,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on Russian military affairs at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.
Kanev said he also identified 16 GRU officers who once lived in the same Moscow dormitory as Anatoly Chepiga, one of the Russian officers suspected of poisoning turncoat GRU agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. Kanev did not publish their names.
Kanev said that he could identify so many officers was a sign that “Russia is eroding.”
The agency is still widely known as the GRU despite a recent name change.
Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, warned that exposing Russian spies who aren’t accused of serious wrongdoing exposed Kanev and his backer, oligarch-turned-dissident Khodorkovsky, “to charges that instead of reforming Russia, they just want to harm it.”