The unprecedented wave of expulsions of Russian diplomats from European capitals – now nearly 400 – is not just a symbolic, albeit reversible, act of aversion to the war crimes Russia is accused of. It is part of a decades-long battle to control the line between espionage and diplomacy, in which the West has recently been accused of too often ignoring a resurgence of Russia’s covert activities, either due to an excessive focus on domestic terrorism or over-reliance on interceptions.
Sir John Sowers, the former head of M16, said last year that he suspected the West was attracting only 10% of Russian espionage.
The current scale of the expulsion of alleged Russian spies – arguably the largest set of such expulsions in history, according to prominent French diplomat Francois Heisburg – may also raise questions about why the West has come to indulge in so many Russian “diplomats” working on European affairs. soil.
As of Friday, only Malta, Cyprus and Hungary have so far refused to send any Russian “diplomats” for packing.
Heisburg insisted that there was a clear and valid distinction between a diplomat and a spy, and that those expelled from Europe would not be chosen at random, but because there was evidence that they were violating the Vienna Convention, the code governing legal diplomacy. In addition to spying, this may include spreading misinformation on social media.
“If you spend your time sending Twitter messages insulting the government of the host country, if you follow the diplomacy of” war wolf “undertaken by Chinese diplomats, this may fall into this definition of making you persona non grata,” Heisburg said.
Heisburg said expulsion is an art. “Obviously, it’s easier to keep track of a spy you know than a spy you don’t know. Once you find out about their existence, they become useful counterintelligence. If you don’t know who they are, you have a problem. “
He recalled that during the so-called farewell affair in the 1980s, KGB deserter Vladimir Vetrov gave nearly 4,000 secret documents to the DST, France’s internal intelligence service, showing how Russia had infiltrated the West to steal its technology. Vetrov also provided a list of 250 intelligence officers stationed under legal cover at embassies around the world.
It was only after Vetrov’s arrest in Moscow, France, acting on Vetrov’s files, that he acted to expel 40 diplomats, two journalists and five salesmen. Heisburg had a role to play in the case, recalling: “Even then, it was useful to keep some names, so we had List A and List B, which we kept in reserve in case the Russians had to take countervailing action. We have made it clear to the Russians that if they make a zipper for the zipper, they will be hit many times harder.
Since the 1980s, Heisburg has said there is no doubt that the share of spies in Russia’s diplomatic service is higher than in most countries.
This raises questions, such as why 290 Russian diplomats will still work in neutral Austria even after the foreign ministry expelled four diplomats after days of hesitation. By comparison, Austria has about 30 diplomats working in Moscow. It is true that large countries have larger embassies – an excellent example is the US embassy in Baghdad – and some Russian diplomats in Vienna – probably 100 – are attached to many UN institutions in Austria, such as the UN nuclear organization IAEA. But the imbalance between Russian and Austrian interest in each other is striking at best.
In retrospect, Poland may also wonder why, after the expulsion of 45 diplomats on March 23, it has granted diplomatic status to so many Russians. Stanislav Zharin, spokesman for the minister of the special services coordinator, justified the expulsion by saying that “we are neutralizing the network of Russian special services in our country”, adding that half of the expelled diplomats are direct employees of the Russian secret service and half were involved in operations for hostile influence.
Stanislaw Zharin, a spokesman for the Polish minister’s special services coordinator, announced the expulsion of 45 Russian diplomats on March 23rd. Photo: Paweł Supernak / EPA
“Russia is not using diplomacy to keep in touch with partners, but to make false claims and false propaganda statements against the West,” Zharin said. In total, the 45 expelled Russians make up about half of Russia’s diplomatic staff in Warsaw.
Poland also views expulsion as a preventive measure. The risk of espionage increased with the sudden influx of Ukrainians into Poland, a potential fertile ground for Russia to provoke dissent, recruit agents or gather information from refugees about military movements. Russia, Zharin said, intends to “create hostility in Poland towards Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia.” Poland is now seizing abandoned old buildings of the Russian embassy in Warsaw.
Two other countries at the forefront of providing heavy weapons to Ukraine – Slovakia and the Czech Republic – were also recently on the espionage front with Moscow.
On March 30, Bratislava expelled 35 diplomats, one of the largest single expulsions in the current wave.
Just two weeks earlier, on March 14, Slovakia had detained four people suspected of spying for Moscow and expelled three Russian diplomats in response. Russia has paid the suspects “tens of thousands of euros” for sensitive or classified information. The quality of this information is disputed, but one of the two accused is the vice-rector and head of the security and defense department of the Academy of the Armed Forces in the northern town of Liptovský Mikuláš.
There is reported evidence of contacts with four officers working for Russia’s military GRU intelligence dating back to 2013.
One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Solomasov, a GRU spy. Slovak intelligence filmed Solomasov smoking and talking in a park with Bohus Garbar, a contributor to the now-closed conspiracy website Hlavné Správy. In the video, he told Garbar: “Moscow has decided that you will be a ‘hunter’ of two types of people: those who love Russia and would like to cooperate, those who want money and have confidential information. The second group are your acquaintances who may or may not think of working for Russia. I need political information and communication between countries, within NATO and the EU. “
The lines may not be Ian Fleming’s purist prose, but in the age of technology-based espionage, they show that spies still depend on the greed and lies of a secular individual.
GRU agents Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov were linked to the poisoning of a newcomer to Salisbury and the sabotage of Czech arms depots. Photo: Sofia Police / PA
The Czechs also have reason to doubt the good faith of the Russian diplomat. In 2014, a mysterious but massive explosion occurred at several remote Czech arms depots, including one in Varbetice near the Slovak border, resulting in two deaths. At that time, Ukraine was on the market for weapons to fight Russia in the Donbass. It was unclear whether the cause of the explosions was sabotage or incompetence, and the case grew cold. But then investigations by British police, as well as the open source investigative newspaper Bellingcat, revealed the identities of two suspected GRU agents. The two were Ruslan Boshirov (real name Anatoly Chepiga) and Alexander Petrov (Alexander Mishkin).
It is alleged that these same aliases were given by two Russians who visited a hotel near Vrbětice just before the 2014 explosion. Emilian Gebrev, who was poisoned in a prestigious restaurant in Sofia in April 2015, just months after the explosion in the Czech Republic.
A 2019 Bellingcat investigation claims that another senior GRU officer, Denis Sergeev (also known as “Sergei Fedotov”), was in Bulgaria during Gebrev’s poisoning, which he survived.
It is also alleged that Sergeev was in the United Kingdom during the poisoning attacks with a newcomer against Sergei and Julia Skripal in Salisbury.
None of these activities, the Czechs concluded, would have taken place without the knowledge of the Russian state.
In April last year, then-Czech Prime Minister Andrei Babish ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats, claiming that GRU Unit 29155 was behind the destruction of weapons.
Russia retaliated by expelling 20 Czechs, but the Czechs increased their expulsion to 60, thus equalizing the size of the two countries’ diplomatic missions. It was one of the largest single expulsions of Russian diplomats since Ronald Reagan ousted 80 diplomats in 1986 at the height of the Cold War. Prague is often described as a center for Russian espionage throughout Europe, but no longer.
Not surprisingly, after the diplomatic massacre in 2021, the Czechs expelled only one Russian diplomat this spring.
In the same vein, Heisburg said, most European countries are not critical of Britain’s failure to expel diplomats after the Bucha massacre. After expelling 29 Russian diplomats after Skripal’s poisoning in 2019, the Russian embassy in London is relatively clean, and the United Kingdom is reluctant to take a step that would send even more of its Russian-speaking envoys, a valuable resource. home from Moscow.
But the contrast between the UK’s and Europe’s response is striking. After the war crimes in Bucha were uncovered, Germany expelled 40 Russian diplomats, France 35, Spain 25, Slovenia 33, Italy – which expelled two Russian spies in 2021 – chose 30 more. France, for mysterious reasons, then expelled six more diplomats . Lithuania …
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