2019: Looking back: The Russia connection 8. Russia’s Modern-Day SMERSH
SMERSH, the counterintelligence unit created by Joseph Stalin in 1943 to conduct sabotage and assassinations behind German lines, was disbanded in 1946, with its operatives and missions moved to the NKVD (later, the KGB). It was revived in three James Bond books as 007’s main nemesis. It now appears that SMERSH, or an organization with similar missions and methods, has been reconstituted within the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence organization. Its name is Unit 29155, and its mission is to conduct assassinations and sabotage in Western European countries.
In 1943, when large parts of the Soviet Union were under Nazi occupation, Joseph Stalin ordered the creation of a counterintelligence unit called SMERSH. The acronym was the combination of parts of two Russian words: “SMER(t)’ SH(pionam)” (Смерть Шпионам; meaning “Death to Spies”). The goal of the new unit was to engage in sabotage behind German lines; assassinate high-level German military officer and civilian administrators; and execute Soviet citizens suspected of spying for Nazi Germany.
SMERSH was disbanded in 1946, and its operatives and missions were assigned to the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, which changed its name to the KGB in 1954, a year after Stalin’s death.
Although SMERSH ceased to exist in 1946, it was revived in several Ian Fleming’s books, where the organization was the man nemesis of James Bond. SMERSH featured prominently in three 007 books: Casino Royal, From Russia with Love, and Live and Let Die. In Goldfinger, SMERSH is mentioned only fleetingly, and Thunderball introduces Bond’ new enemy: SPECTRE.
It now appears that SMERSH, or an organization with similar missions and methods, has been reconstituted within the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence organization.
The French intelligence services have been leading an international hunt for Russian spies after what was described as a “rear base” of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency was discovered in southeastern France, Le Monde reported earlier this month.
French investigators have identified fifteen Russian agents — all members of GRU’s elite Unit 29155 — who made visits to the Alpine region of Haute-Savoie, beginning in 2014. Among the agents identified were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, the two GRU agents who, on Vladimir Putin’s orders, used the powerful chemical novichok to poison the former GRU colonel and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, in 2018.
French, British, Swiss, and U.S. intelligence agencies launched a coordinated effort to clamp down on Russia’s overseas operations in the wake of the Skripal poisoning.It was during this joint counterintelligence campaign that the intelligence services of the four countries discovered that several other GRU agents also stayed in Haute-Savoie — including GRU operatives who were behind the 2015 novichok poisoning in Bulgaria of the arms dealer Emilian Gebrev, who ran afoul of Putin, and agents who tried, but failed, to stage a pro-Russian coup in Montenegro in 2016.
According to Le Monde, the GRU agents would fly to a larger French city such as Lyon or Nice and then travel to Haute-Savoie, a region bordering Switzerland and Italy. Some of them “came many times, others once or twice,” Le Monde reports.
The agents would stay in hotels in various picturesque towns and villages in the region, which is popular among tourists. The agents appeared to have used they stay as a “stopover,” during which they would be given the final briefings before moving on to their missions.
Experts say that Unit 29155 specializes in assassinations and sabotage.
An investigative report in the Spanish newspaper El Pais found that members of Unit 29155 had been involved, between 2016 and 2018, in supporting the Catalan independence movement.
