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Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

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Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#451

Post by ivan_gammel »

cryptonector wrote: post #450
refurb wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's no different back then than now? You catch 3 spies in 1950. Someone shuffling through their paper files notices the numbers are close in range. You have a suspected 4th, and interestingly the passport number is clustered with the prior 3. You use a super computer to analyze passport numbers and compare them to 3 known spies. The computer spits out a pattern. [...] You have a suspected 4th, and intere…

In WWII serial number analysis was used to estimate Nazi tank production rates. That sort of analysis was old had long ago now. Somehow no one in Russia seems to remember.

I doubt that. It is more likely that it is not considered a significant risk compared to everything else. How exactly is this information useful to adversaries? It certainly won’t help uncovering illegals, because their passports are kept away from Western databases. It doesn’t help to block spy operations, because you can connect passport numbers to specific actions only after they happened or you used other methods to detect spies. It doesn’t help breaking plausible deniability to blame Russian government officially, because you would need the hard evidence. So what’s the point in protecting this information more?

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#452

Post by vkou »

kmeisthax wrote: post #375
surfingdino wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suvorov wrote about the Soviet practice of making GRU and KGB compete for the same goals to ensure they get the best intelligence.

How very capitalist of them.

The Soviet Union had multiple competing suppliers for most things you could think of, down to consumer goods.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#453

Post by dkjaudyeqooe »

robben1234 wrote: post #390
captn3m0 wrote: post #52

> In both cases, she used sophisticated tradecraft that sought to leave no trace in databases accessible to European authorities. For instance, she booked her trips and bought her plane tickets using her Czech passport, registering only that nationality with the Greek airline. But upon crossing the Russian border, Šapošnikova used her secret Russian passport, thus bypassing the need to obtain a Russian visa issued to…

I don't follow how is this concerning. All people with more than one citizenship I know at least via a few handshakes use their passports exactly this way for travel. Why would a Russian citizen go through the hoops of getting a Russian visa on their Czech passport? Does Czechia not allow dual citizenship to call the second secret?

Indeed, this isn't spy craft, it's the reality of multiple citizenship.

The reality of entering a country of citizenship is they want you to use that country's passport.

For instance you have to use your Australian passport to enter Australia.

To enter the US you should use your US passport (and have your other passports handy), but strictly speaking you don't need any passport to enter the US as a citizen, you just need to be able to establish your identity.

This can sometimes lead to tricky situations, because another party, the airline, considers you to have only one passport (declared for your ticket) and definitely not change passports from one end of a trip to the other.

The stupid thing that almost no one provides for people who have multiple passports. Often you have to choose to declare the one that makes your life the easiest, or at least breaks the fewest rules.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#454

Post by robocat »

valval wrote: post #444
anovikov wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's a lot better than not letting them leave. Staying in and paying taxes there supports Putin; plus if they knew they are stuck in and can't move to the civilised world, they'd have to develop some sense of belonging with Russia. EU is making everything possible to suck out everyone with half the brain from Russia and this is a good thing. A lot of new immigration programs that appear to be specifically tailor…

Oh yes, it’s not like research says that children of immigrants integrate even worse than their parents.

Citation?

Anecdotally in New Zealand, I know plenty of children of immigrants who have done fine. And their parents that don't integrate (sometimes not even speaking English at all).

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#455

Post by cryptonector »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #451
cryptonector wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In WWII serial number analysis was used to estimate Nazi tank production rates. That sort of analysis was old had long ago now. Somehow no one in Russia seems to remember.

I doubt that. It is more likely that it is not considered a significant risk compared to everything else. How exactly is this information useful to adversaries? It certainly won’t help uncovering illegals, because their passports are kept away from Western databases. It doesn’t help to block spy operations, because you can connect passport numbers to specific actions only after they happened or you used other methods…

> because their passports are kept away from Western databases.

Except unless they get arrested in the West and their secret passports fall into Western intelligence hands.

> It doesn’t help to block spy operations, because you can connect passport numbers to specific actions only after they happened

But getting caught must be no fun.

> It doesn’t help breaking plausible deniability to blame Russian government officially, because you would need the hard evidence.

Nonsense. A block of sequential passport numbers for supposedly unrelated people you suspect of being spies is evidence plenty hard enough.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#456

Post by krab »

thriftwy wrote: post #292
krab wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any attack on ethnic identity. Supporting Russian imperialism doesn't have anything to do with ethnicity. If anything, such support only hurts the Russian nation. I'm talking not only about the current loss of life. For at least the next twenty years, the Russians will have much harder time doing business with EU/USA. Such attitude has downgraded Russia in the world's eyes into an "armed gas station". I.…

If you ask me, "what's better, do business with EU/USA or have Crimea", of course I will pick Crimea every time. It's just feels pragmatically more useful to me, like how co-owning a bungalow on a sea shore is better than holding a Costco membership, if you had to pick just one. That would be before the war, and as the war has started, based on the actions of EU/USA I have very little desire for Russia to engage in m…

How do you (or anyone) personally benefit from "having Crimea"?

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#457

Post by adolph »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #429
adolph wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your pay is less than your cover, do you have to give it back? How does health insurance work for spy stuff? If the GRU agent gets exposed to novachuck, do they get to see a Russian specialist or do they just have access to the providers in their cover plan?

you get paid at your cover job. it's your 9-5. you work in IT, or as a baker, or insurance salesman or whatever. the money you get pays for your flat, and your dinner, etc. you also have a bank account in your home country, and that gets a salary, too. your insurance is through your cover job, or the country's healthcare system (if socialized). which also means you have crappy insurance salesman coverage :/ twenty ye…

Ah, this makes more sense. The "cover" life is independent from the home country life.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#458

Post by thriftwy »

krab wrote: post #456
thriftwy wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask me, "what's better, do business with EU/USA or have Crimea", of course I will pick Crimea every time. It's just feels pragmatically more useful to me, like how co-owning a bungalow on a sea shore is better than holding a Costco membership, if you had to pick just one. That would be before the war, and as the war has started, based on the actions of EU/USA I have very little desire for Russia to engage in m…

How do you (or anyone) personally benefit from "having Crimea"?

You can obviously travel there and see all the Imperial palaces and gardens, swim the sea, visit the museums and have a really good time. In awesome weather, which is of short supply in what's left of mainland Russia.

On the other hand, the usefulness of cordial relations with EU/USA is debatable.

You could make a point that if Russia had good relations with Ukraine, Russians could travel there on their own by just crossing that border. However, Ukraine shown by their repeated maidan coups and anti-Russian rhetoric that they can't be relied upon.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#459

Post by EasyMark »

jojobas wrote: post #407
anovikov wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's a lot better than not letting them leave. Staying in and paying taxes there supports Putin; plus if they knew they are stuck in and can't move to the civilised world, they'd have to develop some sense of belonging with Russia. EU is making everything possible to suck out everyone with half the brain from Russia and this is a good thing. A lot of new immigration programs that appear to be specifically tailor…

How about actually vetting them, even if post factum? Bellingcat, The Insider et al uncovered fake identities and actual biographies of agents with a tiny fraction of resources Western security agencies have. It's actually why these agencies get tax money.

It's hard to read that as "they're better than western intelligencies" because I highly suspect that western intelligence ages knew about this crew and a whole slew of other Russian operatives but are reluctant to take them out as they might lead to bigger fish.

Re: Husband and wife outed as GRU spies aiding bombings and poisonings across Europe

#460

Post by jojobas »

mikrl wrote: post #437
jojobas wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not much safer now that a bunch of disposable Russians have been exposed. Russian businessmen moved to the EU and the US by the thousand per year. We won't know who of them are "businessmen" and nobody is even pretending to check.

>We won't know who of them are "businessmen" AFAIK there isn’t a clean answer to that question. The lines between businessperson, gangster, intelligence agent are very fluid. If you gain some success at one of those in Russia you need to start ingratiating yourself with the others because they will come and find you. It’s like a more brutal version of businessperson / lobbyist in the US. If you want to excel in one y…

The businessmen and 'businessmen' I'm talking about are not high-profile creatures like Deripaska. I'm talking small-time business kind of guys who've earned few $ millions in Russia and decided to move their families to Czechia or Austria. They are not big enough to interest the Russian government or even local cops, and there are thousands of them.

That's where you hide your agents, not among major oil or metal company owners (or rather custodians).

How they operate is well described by defectors. Some maintain wide social circles, focusing on Russian emigrants, rich people in general or some other population, like running a hair salon, a real estate agency, a small hotel or some other front.

Some sit quiet and run an errand here and there.

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