🧵 Sleeper Agents, FSB Assassinations, & GRU Black Ops Unit 29155
Russian espionage expert @michaeldweiss testified before the U.S. Helsinki Commission on Russia's Shadow War on NATO. Key points from his testimony:
2/8 Russia is waging a covert war on NATO territory.
3/8 In the last decade, no other team of Russian intelligence has been more active in unleashing waves of violence across Europe than GRU Black Ops Unit 29155. Their crimes have included scores of sabotage bombings in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.
4/8 In 2015, Unit 29155 also perpetrated the poisoning of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, who was supplying arms to Ukraine and Georgia. Three years later, they would poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the English town of Salisbury.
5/8 In 2019, Putin's Personal Hitman, FSB Agent Vladim Krasikov, gunned down Chechen dissident and former military commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, in Berlin's Tiergarten Park. Krasikov was recently traded back to Russia, with Putin willing to give up Alexei Navalny in exchange.
6/8 GRU is now on the radar of every major intelligence organization, and having trouble traveling to Europe. They're now emulating non-state actors like ISIS, recruiting native citizens remotely via social media platforms like Telegram, paying them in cryptocurrency.
7/8 Russian operatives & sleeper agents remain in Europe, planning attacks on the Paris Summer Olympics & other targets. In closing, Weiss suggests that Russia has long been attacking the West, and that the West must be vigilant to future assassinations, firebombings, & sabotage.
8/8 Watch the rest of the hearing, Russia's Shadow War on NATO, on the Helsinki Commission YouTube:
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