Over Oekraïense militaire inlichtingendienst is een artikel geschreven dat mijn vermoeden tot de ontwikkeling van Israël 2.0 bevestigt.
How Ukrainian military spies are beating their Russian rivals
President Volodymyr Zelensky has denied Ukraine has any designs on Vladimir Putin’s life but last week the deputy head of Ukrainian military intelligence was much less circumspect. Vadym Skibitsky told the German newspaper Die Welt that the Russian president was at the top of its death list “because he co-ordinates and decides what happens”. A British intelligence source cautioned: “I wouldn’t assume it’s just bravado.” The cross-border raid into Russia a few days earlier — carried out by Russian pro-Kyiv forces but probably organised by Ukrainian military intelligence — was proof of their ambition and capabilities. He added: “They are willing to cross a lot of red lines.”
https://www.thetimes.co.u...-russian-rivals-q7n2kqch2
Zelensky mag wel zeggen dat het niet zo ver gaat, maar de mensen onder hem zijn wel bereid om tot de limiet te gaan en over veel rode lijnen te gaan.
De inlichtingendiensten hebben een gedeelde verleden dat in 1917 begon.
Both agencies are known by the same name, the Main Intelligence Directorate — GRU for the Russians, GUR (or HUR) for the Ukrainians — and are offspring of the Soviet GRU, originally known as Razvedupr, established during the civil war that followed the revolution of 1917. In this desperate struggle the Bolsheviks needed an agency that was not just there to gather intelligence but also to fight a war, from assassinating enemy commanders to blowing up railway lines. The GRU never really lost this wartime mindset.
When the USSR was dissolved at the end of 1991, the military intelligence assets on Ukrainian soil transferred to Kyiv’s control, while Russia took over most of the Soviet GRU’s central assets, as well as all the operational elements on its territory.
Aan de Russische kant ging de militaire inlichtingendienst in verval totdat een leider ontdekte dat je beter confirmation bias
(Als je een aandeel gekocht hebt, dan wil je dat iedereen tegen jou zegt dat je een goede keuze gemaakt hebt en de koers kan alleen maar stijgen.) ipv echte inlichtingen kan leveren.
Fortunes fluctuate
Russian military intelligence has experienced triumphs and disasters under Putin. It was in disgrace for under-performing in the 2008 invasion of Georgia, and in 2010 was renamed the GU, the Main Directorate, as an apparent prelude to being downsized. Everyone still calls it the GRU, though, and it was saved by Colonel General Igor Sergun, who took over in 2011. He proved an able and energetic chief. In particular, he realised that Putin was looking not so much for impartial intelligence but confirmation of his prejudices and biases. A now-retired official who sat in on one of Sergun’s presidential briefings described it as a “masterclass in politicised intelligence”, as he proceeded to “tell Putin exactly what he wanted to hear, while playing the part of the bluff, non-nonsense soldier”.
Putin lapped it up, and the GRU’s star was again in the ascendant. It was a key player in the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and in the scrappy, undeclared conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region that followed. There, it stood up proxy militias, managed local warlords and, when necessary, sent Spetsnaz to eliminate commanders who refused to toe Moscow’s line.
De verrassing was dat de Oekraïners decentraal opereren en toeslaan zonder te wachten op orders van bovenaf.
A bad war for some
With the invasion, though, Russian military intelligence seem to have been as wrong-footed as the rest of the Russian military. They had a network of agents ready to try to paralyse Ukraine’s chain of command, but they were not prepared either for a full-scale war or for the Ukrainians’ willingness to act on their own initiative, without waiting for orders from above.
Since then, the GRU’s traditional strengths have largely been neutralised. Its networks of agents in Ukraine have been decimated by a determined campaign by the SBU, the Ukrainian security service, with extensive assistance from western services. Its Spetsnaz suffered heavy casualties in the early stages of the war, highly specialised light infantry thrown into fighting for which they were not equipped, simply because no one else was available. Its much-vaunted cybercapabilities have largely been foiled or contained by a combination of Ukrainian ingenuity, western assistance (including unspecified but acknowledged help from GCHQ) and the lack of a clear Russian strategy.
De Oekraïners hebben niet alleen geleerd hoe om te gaan met cyberaanvallen, maar weten heel goed hoe je de hele overheid naar alternatieve systemen kan overschakelen zo simpel als de phone uit de broekzak halen en eventjes Outlook, Teams,... door Telegram vervangen. De Duitsers stond te kijken naar hoe Oekraïne afstandsonderwijs in 2 dagen ipv 2 jaren kan uitrollen.
Als de aanvallers hard genoeg proberen en genoeg geld/resources ertegen aansmijten, dan hacken ze alles. Dan ga je ervan uit dat alles gekraakt kan worden en je disaster recovery moet dan heel snel kunnen reageren. Oekraïne voert de moeilijkste civiele of militaire migraties in slechts 2 dagen tijd. Het hele land schakelt gewoon zomaar op totaal andere systemen over.
Alhoewel dat de Russen een reputatie van agressieve aanval kan maken.
Finally, while the GRU acquired a reputation for audacious and risky operations, with its infamous Unit 29155 being implicated in everything from the attempted poisoning of the defector Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018 to an attempted coup in Montenegro in 2016, it always operated under tight political control. The Kremlin insisted on approving all significant plans. In this fluid and unpredictable war, though, this has often left Russian military intelligence behind the curve. A Ukrainian counter-intelligence officer described them as “tactically aggressive, but limited by a slow, cumbersome chain of command”.
De Oekraïense tegenhanger is door een officier met frontlijnervaring en oorlogsverwondingen geleid.
A good war for others
By contrast, the smaller, scrappier GUR has come into its own. Its leader, Major General Kyrylo Budanov, is a former officer in Ukraine’s own Spetsnaz (unlike his Russian counterpart, Admiral Igor Kostyukov, who was a naval intelligence analyst), who was wounded three times fighting in the Donbas. Zelensky appears to have given him free rein to stir up trouble in Russia, to torment the Kremlin and to make ordinary Russians fear that the war is coming home to them.
Budanov has a reputation as a ruthless, effective and imaginative operator, and much the same could be said of GUR as a whole. Although there is some evidence of domestic anti-war activism in Russia, Ukrainian military intelligence seems to be behind most recent sabotage attacks in the country. Lacking an extensive network of agents behind enemy lines, it has turned to unexpected new forms of recruitment. Hackers ransack the bank accounts of Russian pensioners who are then blackmailed into firebombing draft offices. Russian teenagers — who claim not to know who is paying them — are hired through social media to set light to railway junction boxes for money.
Hij heeft vrij spel om het leven van de vijand zuur maken en er zijn moderne methoden.
Hack wat gepensioneerden zodat ze hun pensioen kunnen krijgen als ze genoeg brandbommen tegen de rekruteringskantoren gooien.
Betaal de jongeren om de schakelkasten aan de spoorwegen af te branden.
Zo had de vrachtwagenchauffeur geen enkel besef van hoeveel springstoffen dat hij naar de brug aan het besturen was.
Some of the GUR’s most spectacular coups have been executed by people who apparently had no idea that they were carrying out a mission. The haulier who drove a truck full of explosives onto the Kerch bridge in October did not seem to know what he was carrying (he died in the explosion), while the Russian woman who handed an ultra-nationalist blogger a bust that exploded and killed him in St Petersburg was apparently unaware that she was passing on a bomb. A British intelligence officer who has worked with GUR called the agency “Ukraine’s Mossad”, likening it to Israeli intelligence in that “when they go after a target, they really will do whatever it takes”.
Of de vrouw die explosieven naar een ultra-nationalist blogger bracht.
Mossad praktijken zegt genoeg. Geen enkele Rus die een oproep tot genocide deed, zal nog veilig voelen. De Oekraïners gaan achter hem zoals hoe Mossad achter de nazi's in Zuid-Amerika gingen.
Worden de Amerikanen helemaal bang van wat de Oekraïners kunnen doen?
Out of control?
The growing ambition of Ukrainian military intelligence is beginning to alarm certain western countries, even as they respect its professionalism. According to leaked US intelligence reports, the CIA has had to try to restrain Budanov from some attacks in Russia, and unconfirmed reports also suggest the Moldovan authorities asked the Americans to warn him off attempts to stir up trouble in its breakaway Transnistria region, where Russian “peacekeepers” control a large arsenal of Soviet-era weapons and ammunition.