#unit 29155

Navalny vermoord door Ruslands Doodseskader Unit 29155. Te lezen op mijn blog https://sloeserwij.wordpress.com/ #Navalny, #Rusland, #Poetin, #Unit29155, #Spetsnatz

Vrijdag 16 februari 2024 overleed Aleksej Navalny op onverklaarbare wijze. Rusland beweert een natuurlijke dood, maar bewoners van de vrije wereld weten wel beter. Autoritaire regiems hebben gemeen dat zij met harde hand hun macht moeten afdwingen. Deze harde hand beperkt zich niet enkel tot het eigen land maar strekt ver over haar eigen landsgrenzen heen. Alles wat het zittende regiem op enige…

"Western security officials have now concluded that these operations, and potentially many others, are part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe, executed by an elite unit inside the Russian intelligence system skilled in subversion, sabotage and assassination. 

Summary

There is an elite Russian intelligence unit that’s actively seeking to “destabilize Europe.”

Experts consider it more as a “hit squad.”

Members of the unit have been implicated by Robert Mueller.

A lot of their actions are discoverable which begs the question of whether or not they are trying to distract from a more secretive military operation.

Western security officials are only just now beginning to relate “destabilization attempts” across Europe to one elite Russian intelligence group known as Unit 29155; at least, that is the narrative that the New York Times article released on October 9, 2019 wants its readers to believe. The article focuses heavily on the aspect that Russia has maintained an innate anti-Western disposition and has been actively seeking to “destabilize Europe.” While it is certainly true that Unit 29155 has been linked to various “wet-work” type missions, it seems that experts consider them more of a “hit squad” specialized in “subversion, sabotage and assassination,” rather than a wide-spread destabilization effort by the Kremlin.

The GRU is a Russian intelligence organization that reports to the general staff of the Russian Armed forces, and is in charge of Unit 29155. This particular unit has reportedly been in action for the past decade and has had multiple implications of its members by Robert Mueller as being involved in various, previously supposed to be unrelated Russian intelligence plots. Events like the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain in 2018, an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016, trying to prevent the independent country from joining NATO, and in 2015 when two unsuccessful attempts were made to poison Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Gebrev. In fact, all of the operations known by Western security officials to be related to the apparently under-funded Unit 29155 have been failures. The real question is: are these “unsuccessful,” scripted ruses know as “discoverable influence operations,” being put on by the GRU as a distraction from some other mysterious military intelligence purpose?

The known members of Unit 29155 are decorated Russian ex-war veterans, some even possessing the highest Russian military honor, the “Hero of Russian Federation,”that fought in bloody wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Ukraine. A former GRU officer was quoted in the Times article as saying that the unit was often involved in “diversionary” missions like “bombings, murders, anything…”

According to Russia analyst Mark Galeotti from the Royal United Services Institute, the, “attempts to frame [Unit 29155] as some kind of all-Europe, all roles kind of force…is a stretch”. Apparently Unit 29155 is “well-known” among security analysts in Russia with information available in “open sources.”

“You can see a concerted program of activity and yes, it does often involve the same people,” said MI6 chief Alex Younger.

“You can see a concerted program of activity and yes, it does often involve the same people”

-Alex Younger

Regardless, the unit has been associated with nefarious events like two other GRU Units (74455 and 99450) that received a bonus in 2012 from the Russian Federation for “special achievements in military service.” Unit 74455, a cyber warfare unit, has over a dozen members implicated, and is still at large for hacking the servers of the DNC during the 2016 Elections and publishing “embarrassing material” about the Clinton campaign. Unit 99450 is associated with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Only last year, Unit 29155 had two members (Col. Anatoly V. Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin) identified by investigative site Bellingcat and assumed responsible for poising Sergei Skripal, considered by Russia to be a traitor for spying for Britain, and his daughter Yulia by smearing the toxic nerve agent known as Novichok on his front door in Salisbury, England.

The New York Times article, whose authors apparently reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry and received no response to their inquiries, has been generally referenced as the primary source of the new information about Russian Military Intelligence Unit 29155. The Times article has been accused of hyping up various aspects and actions of Russian intelligence and the “secrecy” of the unit by independent Russian journalists, who say information is readily available on the unit’s leader, General Andrei V. Averyavnov; and even the “tight-knit” unit’s address is available in a Google search. Unit 29155 has its physical base in GRU headquarters in eastern Moscow, specifically listed as a Special Purpose Specialist Training facility, specializing in shooting exercises and hand-to-hand combat. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed the allegations against Unit 29155 as “pulp fiction.”

In 2006 Vladimir Putin signed a law into action, legalizing assassinations abroad, the same year Aleksandr Livinenko, who, like Putin, is a former officer of KGB offshoot FSB (Federal Security Service), was killed in London. Putin recently congratulated the GRU at its centenary celebration in November 2018 for being “legendary” to the Russian Federation. The Times article has a general theme that has Vladimir Putin using Unit 29155 to actively fight the West with “hybrid warfare”, which is described as being “a blend of propaganda, hacking attacks and disinformation - as well as open military confrontation.”

Former Estonian Intelligence officer Eerik-Niles Kross says that all of this is “part of the game” for Putin and that Russia is closely involved in “psychological warfare” with the West.

The overall “sloppiness” of the unit, at least from an international intelligence perspective, really conveys the questionable nature of the overall goal of Unit 29155. Are they simply a specialized hit squad, or are they actually trying to destabilize the West and take over the world as we know it? Is all of this just convenient misdirection, or overt sensationalism by anti-Russian establishments? It seems that there are only a few very privileged individuals in the international intelligence community who actually know the answers.

Sources;

Michael Schwirtz. 10/8/19. “Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to destabilize Europe - security officials say.” The New York Times.

10/9/19 “Secret Russian Military Intelligence Unit linked to ‘campaign to destabilize Europe’ NYT. The Moscow Times.

10/10/19. “‘Top Secret’ Russian unit that ‘destabilizes Europe’ is really a small arms training base.” The Moon of Alabama.

10/9/19. The Jerusalem Post Staff. “ Russian unit attempting to destabilize Europe -security officials” The Jerusalem Post.

10/9/19. “New York Times reports Wester security officials believe secret Russian unit responsible for attacks in Europe”Radio Free Europe.