Bumbling or brazen, Russian spy agency in spotlight

PARIS — It seems like a spy film parody — two burly Russian agents staying in a low-end London hotel and doctoring a perfume flask with deadly nerve agent, oblivious to security cameras filming them.

The operation to poison ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Britain was either botched, or intentionally obvious. But experts say it’s hallmark GRU, the Russian military spy agency with a brutish reputation that’s increasingly taking on high-profile, high-risk operations to damage enemies or strike fear.

After British authorities identified two alleged GRU agents as the perpetrators, releasing copies of their passports and a slew of CCTV images to back up the accusation, Russian social networks exploded with caricature photos and memes ridiculing the claim. The implication is the GRU would never do something so dumb.

Yet the Russian public may never know what actually happened, given the murkiness and myth that have surrounded the GRU since the Soviet era. “No normal Russian citizen has any idea what they are doing,” said independent military analyst Alexander Golts.

It’s not the first time that alleged GRU agents have failed to cover their tracks, stirring suspicions that they are trying to send a message. British Prime Minister Theresa May said the Skripal poisoning in March was a possible warning to other Russians in London that they aren’t safe, and threatened to strike back.

It also sends a signal that “nobody is safe from the long arm of the Kremlin,” said John Sipher, an ex-CIA agent in Moscow who ran the agency’s Russia operations, said.

The Kremlin calls the British evidence hogwash, along with everything else the GRU has been accused of in recent years — hacking the 2016 U.S. election campaign, trying to stage a coup in Montenegro, downing a Malaysian Airlines plane over Ukraine, running mercenaries in Syria.