Thread by @anno1540

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Sabotage from a safe distance
Who is behind the new GRU tactics in Europe

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, very strange things have been happening in European countries almost every month.
- Migrants protesting against Erdogan appear on the streets of Paris, pretending to be Ukrainians, military plants suddenly catch fire in Germany and England, and saboteurs planning explosions on railways are caught in Poland and the Czech Republic

dossier.center/diversion/

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All of this is a consequence of the new tactics of Russian military intelligence, better known as the GRU.

- After the high-profile failures of Petrov and Boshirov, the unsuccessful organization of a cyberattack on the OPCW office in The Hague, and the almost complete exposure of the servicemen of military unit 21955 by journalists, the #GRU began to rely much less on its own officers in its foreign work.

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Of course, the mass expulsion of diplomats, many of whom were also GRU "cover agents" at embassies, also had an effect. Now the intelligence officers lead operations from Russia, and the main actors have become "agents-group leaders" - hired curators who organize sabotage on the ground. In this way, military intelligence hoped to keep the identities of at least some officers secret – but it failed

Today, the Dossier Center introduces readers to a new team of GRU officers responsible for sabotage abroad.

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Through prison to Russia
On March 2, 2024, a police bus brought a dented man with a green plastic bag to Riga City Court. He and two other accomplices were accused of intentional damage to property. According to the investigation, several days earlier they threw a Molotov cocktail at the Riga Occupation Museum, which tells about the periods of German and Soviet rule in Latvia.
rus.lsm.lv/statja/novosti…

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The Molotov cocktail landed in the office of the museum director, but did not cause significant damage. Initially, investigators assumed that the crime was committed on the basis of hatred, but soon began to consider the version of sabotage by the Russian special services.

Further investigation led law enforcement officers to jail: the local state security service suspected that the order to set the museum on fire came via Telegram from an inmate of the Daugavgriva prison in Daugavpils
rus.lsm.lv/statja/novosti…

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On the Russian side, the crime was supervised by a certain "Wlodek Lach". As the Dossier Center managed to find out, this name was hiding GRU officer Vladimir Lipchenko. A Telegram account under the name "Vlodeka" turned out to be linked to the number used by Lipchenko. The choice of pseudonym was probably dictated by the intelligence officer's roots: he was born in the south of Ukraine, in Nikolaev.

Lipchenko works under the leadership of GRU Colonel Denis Smolyaninov, who has long been no stranger to collaborating with bandits. In 2023, we reported on the colonel's incredibly turbulent activities - he sent mercenaries to Donbass, supervised the Longifolia PMC created by criminal authorities, deployed an agent network in Ukraine on the eve of the Russian invasion, and even tried to set NATO countries at odds

The operational failure, as a result of which his operations became known to the public, did not hinder his career. Denis Smolyaninov began to supervise GRU sabotage in Western countries, and Vladimir Lipchenko and other military intelligence officers joined a group created specifically for this purpose.

New tactics

In May 2024, the Financial Times reported that European intelligence services had warned their governments of an increased threat of sabotage from the Kremlin.
ft.com/content/c88509…

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According to the newspaper, Russian intelligence services were actively preparing explosions, arson, and damage to infrastructure on European territory, both directly and through intermediaries, without much concern for the deaths of civilians or the fate of the perpetrators. A couple of weeks later, The New York Times reported that the GRU was responsible for the campaign, and its main goal was to slow down arms supplies to Ukraine and create the appearance of discontent with support for Ukraine in Europe
nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/…

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However, military intelligence does not shy away from other topics - the main thing is that they sow discord in an already polarized Western society. For example, the war between Israel and Palestine became a convenient pretext.

On the night of November 30, 2023, graffiti in the form of a Star of David appeared on various buildings in Paris. They were drawn by Moldovan citizens Alexandru Cocii, Galina Gevcan, Maxim Ciugureanu, Vera Ciobanu and Veaceslav Valco. Valco responsibly photographed the inscriptions for a report to the curator. Later, about 250 graffiti with a similar design were noticed in the suburbs of Paris. Presumably, they were supposed to refer to the years of Nazi rule, who marked the houses of Jews with the Star of David. Drawing six-pointed stars was the only purpose of the Moldovans' trip to the city of love.

Chuguryan, Cioban and Valko managed to escape, but Kochia and Gevkan were detained by the police. They said that another Moldovan citizen, Anatoly Prizenko, sent them to Paris, paying for the operation. Before the graffiti incident, Prizenko held pro-Russian views. According to Dossier, he was the administrator of the pro-Kremlin community "For the Customs Union - Prosperity of Moldova" on Odnoklassniki.
ok.ru/referendum

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In a comment to the Moldovan publication TV8, Prizenko confirmed

- that he organized the action. Earlier, he claimed that a man named "David" contacted him and asked him to find two people to apply the graffiti. "David" promised 250 euros per person for the work. Prizenko said that he and "David" knew each other from their correspondence on TikTok, where the latter identified himself as a representative of the Jewish defense organization "Shield of David" in Europe.tv8.md/2024/06/24/vid…

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The photographer of the action, Vyacheslav Valko, like Prizenko, is related to the Customs Union - he ran

for parliament on the lists of the Moldova Elections - Customs Union bloc in 2014, and recently helped politician Ilan Shor, whose party is supervised

by the FSB. Valko claims

that a man wrote to him on Telegram who allegedly saw Valko on TikTok and shares his civic position. Valko needed to meet people at the Chisinau airport, fly to Paris, and also buy chalk-based spray paint. His contact sent money for expenses in advance. In the group, the person indicated where the graffiti should be applied. After the operation, Valko was promised 500 euros, but he never saw this money.tv8.md/2024/06/24/vid…
washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/…
tv8.md/2024/06/24/vid…

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According to a Dossier source close to the presidential administration, GRU officers were also behind this operation to incite anti-Semitism. According to him, the country's political leadership was dissatisfied with the military intelligence officers, since the action did not cause panic or lead to violence. During interrogation, the detained Moldovan citizens said that they were drawing graffiti with the Star of David in support of the Jews, and this practically reduced the public outcry to zero.

This scheme — hiding the true customers of the events behind a chain of curators — is becoming increasingly widespread in sabotage operations in the West. In intelligence slang, people like Prizenko are called "agents-group leaders." As Soviet military intelligence officer Konstantin Zvonarev wrote , they are responsible to the intelligence service for the activities of other agents
istmat.org/node/29938

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The Dossier Center has already reported that Colonel Denis Smolyaninov regularly used such group leaders, for example, to write anti-Erdogan graffiti in Paris — they were intended to sow tension between NATO countries amid negotiations on admitting Sweden and Finland to the alliance. The perpetrators often do not even realize that they are working for Russian special services.

Group leaders are sought through job search chats among radical or pro-Russian activists, or among representatives of criminal groups.

Ideology is not important for the GRU - for tasks of national importance, far-right and far-left activists are equally well suited.
- Thus, in Smolyaninov's documents, we found plans to organize left-wing radical protests against NATO and Ukraine. Another curator promised the colonel to hold 15-person protests throughout Western Europe, from London to Athens, under straightforward slogans: "no to drawing our country into war", "NATO is our common enemy", "for leaving NATO and closing military bases", "sanctions harm not only the Russian economy, but ours as well".

The group leader asked for 7,500 euros for organizing one such anti-war event. It follows from the report that it was planned to develop network work with European leftists on the basis of a certain “Molotov Club” and the pro-Russian Ukrainian organization “Borotba”, which was supposed to provide contacts with coordinators

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It is unknown who compiled the document. The Molotov Club itself is not a registered organization, its website has been deleted, but its VKontakte page with 56 subscribers remains.

According to the documents at Dossier’s disposal, one of the founders of the club is former Borotba activist Leonid Ilderkin, also known under the pseudonyms Mikhail Ruvimov, Semyon Shklovsky, and Dmitry Dezhnev. Since 2016, this club has held events together with Anti-Maidan and the Union of Political Prisoners and Political Emigrants of Ukraine.

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The document mentions an action that has already taken place in the German city of Duisburg. Some of the people mentioned in the project as foreign contacts also act in the spirit of the organizer's plans. For example, German Tobias Pfennig spoke at a demonstration in the Saxon city of Aue in March 2024 with the slogan "Never more NATO - never more wars!" and spoke about his recent trip to Russia and meeting with Dmitry Peskov.

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The GRU colonel had similar plans for the Baltic countries. According to analytical notes in his documents, in Lithuania, military intelligence officers planned to deploy a support network for the Kremlin through supporters of Algirdas Paleckis, a former Lithuanian politician convicted of collaborating with Russian special services. According to the court's conclusion, Paleckis passed on to Russia information about Lithuanian law enforcement officers who participated in the trial of former FSB special forces "Alpha" fighters who carried out the bloody seizure of the TV tower in Vilnius in 1991. In Latvia, the former leader of the Russian Union of Latvia in Daugavpils, Yuri Zaitsev, and the chairman of the Latvian National Democratic Party, former member of the RNE, Yevgeny Osipov, were proposed as group leaders.

For the unified coordination of activities in the CIS countries (republics of the former USSR), it is proposed to create an Information and Analytical Agency, possibly not on the territory of the Russian Federation (options: Kyrgyzstan, Armenia), through which, under various pretexts, the activities of the subnet can be secretly financed,” the document concluded.

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Criminal connections
Schemes with such "protest actions" were worked out for several years, and after the start of a full-scale war, the GRU moved on to much more active and dangerous measures. Over the past two years, arson and sabotage attempts have become more frequent in Europe.

In February 2024, a factory producing Edge Autonomy drones caught fire in Marupe, Latvia, and a few months earlier, an unknown person set fire to the "SHIZO" installation of Alexei Navalny's supporters in Lithuania.
rus.delfi.lv/57863/criminal…

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On May 3, 2024, a factory of the defense concern Diehl Group, whose products are also supplied to Ukraine, caught fire in Berlin — the fire was so large that it took more than three days to extinguish it. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, German intelligence agencies believe that the arson of the Berlin factory was the work of experienced professionals. According to them, in such operations, the Kremlin uses criminals who are recruited on social networks and paid in cryptocurrency.
dw.com/ru/pozar-v-ber…

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A Dossier source in the criminal world said that the GRU has recently been actively cooperating with former and current Interior Ministry operatives to recruit agents among the criminal contingent. According to him, Russian security forces are looking for criminals not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova and Serbia. The emphasis is on those who have a foreign passport and the ability to enter Europe. According to him, he and his acquaintances have received several offers to go to the Baltic countries or Poland to destabilize the local situation. Another source close to the presidential administration says that the special services are expected to activate agents among the criminal circles of Moldova and Transnistria - they often have EU passports.

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Sabotage team
The GRU has assembled a whole team to organize sabotage, protests, and attacks abroad. For such tasks, special operational groups are created in intelligence, which may include specialists from different units, and sometimes from other special services.

This is necessary in order to combine different professional qualities, which became especially important after a series of GRU failures and the mass expulsion of "undercover agents" from embassies.

If earlier sabotage in Europe was mainly carried out by operatives of the infamous military unit 21955, then after the start of the war, it became more difficult and dangerous to personally go on missions. Thanks to this, intelligence officers with good intelligence skills came to the forefront - one of them was Colonel Denis Smolyaninov. He was born in 1976 in Chelyabinsk and graduated from the Chelyabinsk Higher Military Aviation School of Navigators, served in Smolensk.

In the mid-2000s, he moved to St. Petersburg and began working in the 172nd command and intelligence center of the GRU (military unit 64501). Intelligence information flows into such centers for further processing and analysis.

Colonel Denis Smolyaninov // Dossier Center

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Vladimir Lipchenko, who goes by the pseudonym "Wlodek Lyakh," is Smolyaninov's subordinate. They have been working together for more than a decade: according to documents from Smolyaninov's materials, Lipchenko sent him reports as early as 2011. According to the databases, Lipchenko received an intelligence education and was then seconded to military units associated with the navy. According to data from 2007, Lipchenko listed the address Moscow, Narodnogo Opolcheniya, 50. The Military Diplomatic Academy , also known as the "Conservatory," is located there. It trains personnel for armed forces intelligence.

Vladimir Lipchenko // social networks

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In 2006-2007, Lipchenko was assigned to military unit 74701. Judging by the only mention in the court decision, this is a military command body within the Navy. It is quite possible that a naval intelligence officer could be listed as serving in a command body (for example, an officer in one of the departments of the naval intelligence department). In 2008, Lipchenko was already serving in military unit 39079, located in Kronstadt. Presumably, this is the 43rd separate platoon of the 526th commandant's office for the protection and maintenance of the Leningrad naval base. Probably, after training, intelligence officer Lipchenko was assigned to the commandant's unit either for reasons of secrecy or due to the unpredictable military bureaucracy. It is possible that Lipchenko's actual place of service may not have been in St. Petersburg

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His first and second wives were also registered at addresses associated with military intelligence. In addition, Lipchenko's first wife was registered in 2008 in a building known as the "NKVMF House" or "House of the Navy", where naval officers received apartments. She was also listed in military unit 10730-1 - the communications center of the Baltic Fleet intelligence department. The unit was combat: it purchased raid boats and diving equipment, and there were casualties among the personnel. Lipchenko's wife could have been registered there because of her husband's work, or she herself was a military servicewoman or a civil servant at the communications center. Lipchenko's daughter from his first marriage, born in 1999, was also registered at the address of the GRU "Conservatory". Now, judging by her social networks, she has left the country and lives in Serbia

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Another person who is highly likely to be part of the GRU sabotage group is the notorious intelligence officer Eduard Shishmakov. Shishmakov is a former attaché at the Russian embassy in Poland, where he worked since at least 2013. However, he did not like this position - Dossier has the officer's stories about an attack by local nationalists, reports on the purchase of cheap embassy vodka, and complaints about the language barrier and the need to constantly write reports. Here is one example:

“Everything is fine with me. On February 25, we organized a reception at the Embassy on the occasion of Defender of the Fatherland Day. It was a pain in the ass. We spent the whole of last week messing around with this reception, the whole weekend, and it ended in three hours, everyone left and such devastation set in that it’s simply impossible to describe. In short, receptions are just a pain in the ass. They are held very often, all embassies have Armed Forces Days or national holidays. And you have to go to all these days. Some organize receptions during the day, some in the evening, some at the embassy, ​​some in restaurants. All the foreign attachés speak only English, only a few speak Polish. So you have to explain yourself with your fingers. It’s good that there are Poles, you can talk to them. In short, the work here is not easy. Don’t think that I’m complaining, it’s just hard with our people who have educations from other departments. And there’s also a lot of internal hassle, paperwork, etc. I go to bed at one o’clock in the morning at best, I get up at seven because I have to take [my son] to kindergarten, then to the Embassy – and off to the madhouse

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It is not surprising that Shishmakov became famous not in the diplomatic arena at all - in 2017, the Montenegrin authorities accused him of attempting to organize a coup d'etat in the country with the participation of Serbian nationalists. Initially, Shishmakov was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison, but was acquitted in July 2024. Now he organizes political interventions from Russia
theins.ru/news/273049

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Shishmakov served at the same time and in the same military units as Vladimir Lipchenko , and before that he was registered at the address of military unit 10730, to which Lipchenko's first wife was related. Then, like her, he changed his registration to the House of the People's Commissariat of the Navy. They often went on trips together with Vladimir Lipchenko, as follows from the databases

This group also includes Yuri Sizov — his name appeared

in the press in May 2024, when Ukrainian special services accused him of attempting to organize terrorist attacks in Kiev on May 9. According to the Ukrainian side, Sizov served in military unit 92154 — a special forces unit of the GRU in Solnechnogorsk-2 near Moscow. In the databases, the Dossier Center managed to find Yuri Sizov registered at the address of the GRU headquarters, who once lived in Solnechnogorsk-2. Sizov is the youngest of the known employees of this group, he is only 36 years old. He graduated from the Cherepovets Higher Military Engineering School of Radio Electronics and, judging by the groups in Telegram, is interested in protest, right-wing movements and emigration, and also monitors the group of Igor Strelkov's "Club of Angry Patriots". According to information from the databases, in February 2016, Sizov bought tickets for the Sapsan three times together with Ksenia Shoigu, and they sat in adjacent seats.nv.ua/ukraine/events…

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Another GRU officer who is likely part of the group is Alexander Sapetko. Like many intelligence officers, he was born in Magdeburg, Germany, where Soviet troops were stationed in the GDR. Sapetko turned out to be a colleague of Colonel Smolyaninov from the 172nd GRU command and intelligence center, where he had been listed since at least 2006. As Dossier has already reported, the center's employees were also directly involved in organizing intelligence work in Ukraine (at least in 2014-2016), and tried to participate in the information war in Ukraine and the Baltic states. It is possible that the center also has combat units, since it purchased equipment for scuba diving

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Organizing sabotage and the European direction are not the only ones for Colonel Smolyaninov's group. Dossier will tell about his other projects in the following investigations.
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End dossier.center/diversion/