Vengeance is a dish that is eaten cold, especially in the world of espionage. According to information from World, an unprecedented hunt, launched in the spring of 2018 by the British, French and Swiss counter-espionage services and their partners, especially the United States, made it possible to draw up a list of fifteen Russian military intelligence officers (GRU). These members of the same unit, specializing in assassinations, circulated in Europe, from 2014 until the end of 2018.
The British, French and Swiss secret services, supported by their partners, mobilized after the Novichok attack, a nerve agent neurotoxic, of the Soviet era, on March 4, 2018, in Salisbury, in the south of England. by two officers of the GRU, against Sergei Skripal, a former colleague passed to the West. This vast hunt for the GRU killers, to which the Directorate-General for Internal Security (DGSI) has strongly contributed, showed that all of these fifteen officers have been transited and resided in France during this period. Some have come many times, others once or twice. They came from London, Moscow, Spain or Switzerland. France was able to serve as a so-called "security" stage before these agents, skilled in underground technology, reach their final destination.
These fifteen men have regularly stayed in the same area, in Haute-Savoie, in cities such as Annemasse, Evian or Chamonix, and in more isolated towns. Before that, they often landed in Roissy or Lyon, once in Nice, before spending the night in a hotel in Cannes, and many times in Geneva. They rented cars to go to Haute-Savoie. While many questions still remain, this border region with Switzerland, according to French counterintelligence, has served as a back-up and logistical base for this GRU action service for actions conducted throughout Europe.
Mr Skripal's poisoning attempt sounded like an act of chemical warfare and a serious provocation
No trace of operations of this unit of the GRU has, to date, been detected in France. The function of "base camp" of this department could explain the choice of Russian services not to attract the attention of local authorities by operating on French soil. These fifteen agents are attached to unit 29155 of 161e special training center of the GRU. This institution formed, at the time of the Cold War, cadres of communist guerrillas in Asia, Africa or Central America. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this unit has been converted into a clandestine action service, and is now engaged in assassination, sabotage or more obscure tasks such as the "dead letter boxes", a means of communicating secret agents in the world. Their modus operandi, quite atypical in the world of espionage, explains the pooling of efforts to hunt down these men.
