As I predicted in June, Russia is escalating its terrorist campaign against NATO. Once again, we’re witnessing the near-total disregard of the GRU military intelligence service for innocent life (while also very unpleasant organizations, Russia’s FSB domestic security service is more focused on assassinations, and the SVR foreign intelligence service tends to focus on political influence campaigns, longer-term operations, and more traditional espionage).
The GRU’s disdain for target discrimination is utterly unsurprising. It’s what the organization lives for.
Take the 2018 GRU assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal. After smearing a highly toxic Novichok nerve agent on Skripal’s door handle, the two-man GRU attack team then discarded the significant quantity of remaining Novichok (hidden in a Premier Jour perfume bottle) in a trash can. A man later found that bottle and, thinking it contained perfume, gave it to his girlfriend as a gift. She sprayed herself and later died. That’s bad enough. But what if a group of schoolgirls had found the bottle? What if the victim had sprayed herself on a train? Many more innocents would have died, all because the GRU didn’t care who it hurt.
Such shoddy, indiscriminate tradecraft would offend any credible intelligence service. Not the GRU. Its officers view these tactics as a valuable tenet of their professional identity — not as embarrassments to be hidden, but markers of aggression to be feared. And they are acting as such in their attack efforts against the West.
Take the August attempt by the GRU to fly explosives-laden drones into cargo planes at a German airport. What might have happened had the crew been on board at the time? Or had airport staff passed by? How about the GRU’s 2024 effort to smuggle explosives into cargo planes departing Europe for the United States and Canada? What might have happened had the explosives detonated over an American city? Then there’s the GRU’s attack on France’s high-speed passenger train network as the 2024 Summer Olympics began. What if a safety system had failed as a packed train sped through an affected area? Contemplate the GRU’s overnight arson attacks on shopping centers, storage facilities, and furniture stores across the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Spain, and Poland. What thought of the night staff?
True, many of these attacks are carried out by non-Russian deniable agents. These individuals are often criminals or anti-Western zealots looking to make easy money. Recruited by the Russian intelligence services via the Telegram messaging app, they are then paid to conduct espionage and, eventually, to carry out attacks. This hire-for-attack approach offers Russia a cost-effective means to pursue numerous terrorist plots at once. It also reduces Russia’s direct evidentiary links to an attack, giving the Kremlin’s shameless denials of responsibility just enough credibility to deter tougher NATO retaliation and avoid alienating otherwise Moscow sympathetic individuals in the West.
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Yet, none of this reduces the GRU’s guilt. On the contrary, by hiring petty criminals with little or no training in the use of explosives and incendiaries, the GRU exponentially increases the risk of an attack going wrong and causing a tragedy. The GRU is responsible for the planning and direction that underpins these attacks. Were it at all concerned about minimizing the risk to innocent life, it would direct its officers and agents to act very differently.
Instead, like the good KGB man he is, President Vladimir Putin simply wants visible results. The innocent be damned, the GRU shows its true nature (a nature, Americans will come to learn, that has terribly afflicted hundreds of our citizens also).