How Russia's spies became the best known secret agents on the planet

Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, is back in the news. Ten years ago, it was said to be in a state of terminal decline. Since then, it has become the ‘go-to’ agency for the Kremlin because of its flexibility, aggression and ‘can-do’ attitude. It is president Putin’s one-stop shop for global subversion.

But it may now have overstretched itself. The GRU has been accused of plotting to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which had been investigating the Salisbury attack. Earlier this year, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) indicted seven Russian GRU spies on hacking charges related to leaking Olympic athletes’ drug-test information; GRU operatives have also been indicted in relation to the US presidential election hacks. And the Canadians have confirmed that breaches at the Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency were probably carried out by Russian intelligence. So many GRU operatives are now being named that its personnel are in danger of becoming the best known secret agents on the planet.

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The GRU is much broader and has a greater licence to operate than Britain’s intelligence agencies. GRU spooks get their hands dirty, performing tasks ranging from coups to ‘wet jobs’ (state assassinations); but they also understand cyber operations.

The Ukraine war gave the GRU its chance to re-establish itself.