Putin's Killer Spies Have Finally Gone Too Far

https://observer.com/2018/09/petrov-and-boshirov-outed-as-putins-killer-spies-in-sergei-skripal-poisoning/

A brief review of GRU’s recent “greatest hits” reveals the extent of the problem. First came the use of that service’s “Little Green Men” to steal Crimea, followed by GRU’s outsized role in Moscow’s invasion and ongoing dirty war in eastern Ukraine. That ugly conflict includes GRU’s hand behind the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014, killing 298 innocents. Then there was GRU’s failed coup in Montenegro, which came up short thanks to appallingly sloppy tradecraft by Russian spy-terrorists. To say nothing of GRU clandestine operations in the theft of emails belonging to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, whose public release did so much to throw our presidential election Donald Trump’s way two years ago. Just last week, GRU operatives were busy in Germany, stoking far-right riots in Chemnitz. Wherever something nefarious and Kremlin-flavored is going on these days, GRU’s black bat is generally lurking nearby.

None of this is rogue activity. Vladimir Putin, despite his own past with the KGB and its domestic successor the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which views GRU as a bureaucratic rival, has opted to employ his military intelligence all over the world in highly risky and aggressive operations. It’s what I’ve termed Special War, that shadowy amalgam of espionage, propaganda and terrorism which Moscow excels in. The Salisbury assassination demonstrates that GRU is dangerous and careless in equal measure.

We should hope that, with the negative press this week care of Prime Minister May, the Kremlin will reassess the wisdom of employing weapons-grade nerve agents in Western cities. There is direct precedent here. Back in 1988, a hitman dispatched by Communist Yugoslavia shot Nikola Štedul, a Croatian émigré, several times as he walked his dog in a sleepy Scottish town. Despite multiple wounds inflicted at point-blank range, Štedul miraculously survived, and his would-be killer, Vinko Sindičić, a mass-murderer for Belgrade, got caught thanks to sloppy tradecraft. Cold War Yugoslavia employed wetwork against its enemies abroad in a manner very similar to Putin’s Russia today, and just like GRU, Belgrade’s spies grew slack and overconfident. Sindičić was convicted of attempted murder and spent 10 years in a British prison. After this debacle, Yugoslav intelligence reassessed the wisdom of conducting assassinations abroad.

Vladimir Putin and his increasingly rogue regime would be wise to do the same. The Salisbury killers may not be in custody, but they have been outed. London now is promising to take the fight to the enemy, disrupting and dismantling Russia’s spy-killer networks. Western counterintelligence can do that, if the will finally exists to push back against the Kremlin’s Special War in a concerted fashion. If we do not, GRU will continue to act as a top espionage and terrorist threat to the West, rivalling Al-Qa’ida and the Islamic State in its lethality.


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More at link. Stitching together decades of assassinations into a coherent pattern is something our press just doesn't do. John Schindler's expertise shows the way.