Putin's elite spies hunt in the West. She fell in because of one mistake

An elite unit of the Russian secret services, consisting of hackers, snipers and spies, is hunting opponents of Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the West, the weekly “Der Spiegel” reported.

The weekly's website reported that a member of the unit – established by the Russian military intelligence GRU – was arrested at the end of February at the airport in the capital of Colombia, Bogota. The Russian was wanted by the FBI on suspicion of leading operations aimed at killing Russian dissidents in the West.

Denis A. had perfectly forged documents, and he contacted his closest collaborator, a Serbian citizen, via coded Messenger. However, since he did not know Serbian and his partner did not know Russian, agents used Google to translate their messages, which allowed the FBI to intercept their communications.

Unit 75127, also called center 795, carries out sabotage operations on the Kremlin's orders and eliminates Putin's opponents living in the West, “Der Spiegel” reported. The unit is directly supervised by the Chief of the General Staff of Russia, Valery Gerasimov.

The branch was established in early 2023 on the initiative of the general staff. It numbers about 500 people and – in order to confuse foreign intelligence services – operates under the banner of the training center at the Kalashnikov weapons plant. Western services estimate that the reason for creating the unit was to disgrace its predecessor, whose members were involved in corruption scandals, and information about the actions it carried out leaked to the public.

According to the weekly, officers of this group are responsible for the attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018.as well as for the attack on a Bulgarian arms dealer and for blowing up a weapons factory in the Czech Republic.

The unit – according to “Der Spiegel” – has, among others, drones, and its ranks also include hackers and snipers.

Western services initially disregarded the new unit, believing that it would limit its activities to the territory of Ukraine. The detention of a member of the group in Colombia proves the broader ambitions of the elite unit – the website of a German weekly reported. (PAP)

jbw/ sp/