Thread by @michaeldweiss

[Thread] Meet Martin Möller, an Austrian colonel who spent decades spying for Russian military intelligence. In the last half-decade or so, he worked with a specific unit of the GRU: dennikn.sk/2082755/russia…

First, what you might expect: intel on German military units and equipment, anything that might be gleaned from (non-NATO) Austria's alliance with NATO member-states:

This involved giving his handlers a look at the Structural Planning Department at the Austrian Ministry of Defense as well as NATO troop vulnerabilities in Afghanistan (where Austrian troops also fought), from meetings held at NATO HQ in Brussels, which Möller attended:

But note the above re: IED attacks and how exposed coalition forces in theatre were to them. The quote here is from someone "acquainted with the intelligence activities of the exposed colonel."

Which is very likely to be someone in Austrian counterintelligence, or an allied service who was read into Möller's espionage record.

(The outlet I'm selecting excerpts from is a Slovakian news portal, so it could well be a Slovakian source.)

Möller, it seems, liaised directly with Andrey Averyanov, the head of Unit 29155, or at least met with one of his two career-length GRU handlers, Igor Zaytsev, when the latter was in the same city (and same hotel) as Averyanov:

In 2013 (roughly two years before U.S. intel community assessed that Russia was aiding the Taliban), Möller's meeting with Zaytsev was even arranged by a member of Unit 29155. And not just any member but one of the future Montenegro coup plotters, Eduard Shishmakov:

Leaving aside the lump of Swiss cheese that is Austria's natsec sector, you have what may only be a mere coincidence but a set of facts nonetheless that analysts at Langley working the "bounties" story won't see as such:

A long-term GRU mole in Austria feeding Russia sensitive NATO/Austrian MoD data about coalition troop exposure to Taliban IEDs. And who, exactly, is he feeding it to? The very same assassination-and-sabotage unit of the GRU @charlie_savage first associated the "bounties" with.

And if you'd like a little context on why Austria has traditionally been a playground for Western and Russian spies, read this: thedailybeast.com/leaked-kgb-man…

Another point of interest: Möller, this article suggests, was caught *because* of his proximity to Unit 29155, which has been severely compromised by the West owing to its ambitious (and often failed) operations in the last five years.

So this paints an increasingly integrated picture:
1. What did the GRU want and when did it want it?
2. What does Unit 29155 do and what doesn't it do?
3. What intel did we have prior to this linking Russian ops to Taliban attacks on coalition forces?

4. Do we notice any pattern about Taliban attacks (frequency, altered methods, etc.) after Möller handed the GRU intel on IED vulnerabilities?

5. Cross-reference all the above with intercepts about cut-outs of Unit 29155 paying Taliban commanders.