A couple of spies from the Russian Federation, imprisoned in Sweden, lived next door to GRU agents
Christo Grozev revealed that a married couple, detained in Sweden on suspicion of espionage, own an apartment in Moscow in the same building as the publicly exposed GRU agents.
Representatives of the Russian special services fail again and again due to the public access to data that can be used to trace their connections.
Eliot Higginsthe founder of Bellingcat’s investigative group, wrote about this at Twitter.
According to Higgins, one of the leaders of Bellingcat, Christo Grozev, revealed that a married couple, detained on November 22 in Sweden on suspicion of espionage, have owned an apartment in Moscow since 1999 in the same building as the publicly “exposed” agents and heads of the GRU in Russian Federation.
It is known that one of the Russians is accused of “gross illegal intelligence activities against Sweden and a foreign state”. The security agency noted that the effort to detain the suspects was carried out with the help of the Swedish police and the armed forces.
Previously, the names of the prisoners were named in the media – these are Sergey Skvortsov and Elena Kulkova. According to available information, since 1999 they and their family members have been the owners of an apartment in Moscow at ul. Grief, 36.
In the same building, one of the apartments belongs to GRU military intelligence officer Denis Sergeev, who is suspected of having poisoned Sergei Skripal in Great Britain. Higgins noted that Sergeev, under the name Sergei Fedotov, participated in the poisoning of Bulgarian businessman Emelyan Gebrev in 2015.
Another apartment in the same building belongs to Major General Andrey Averyanov, who heads military unit 29155 of the GRU, also known as the “161 training center”, where GRU officers are trained.
Another apartment at st. Zorge, 36, belongs to GRU Major General Andrei Ilyichenko.
It is not known if the Russians arrested in Sweden lived at this address since they moved to the country shortly after acquiring an apartment.
Skvortsov and Kulkova are suspected of having been involved in espionage against the United States since 2013 and against Sweden since 2014, Swedish officials say.
Russian spies in Europe
David Ballantyne Smith, a former British embassy guard in Berlin, pleaded guilty to spying for Russia while working in Germany. He was accused of passing on information about people working at the embassy to Russian officials and intelligence services and gathering additional information about the embassy’s operations.
Meanwhile, the head of British counterintelligence agency MI5, Ken McCallum, said that during the Russian Federation’s war against Ukraine, the Russian intelligence network abroad suffered the most serious blow in modern history.