In Moscow's Shadows 235: From a GRU to a Kill

Yes, that's a lame James Bond title wordplay. Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, second in command of Russian military intelligence (technically, GU; colloquially, still GRU) is gunned down in Moscow. Whodunnit, whydunnit, and what will it mean? Of course, I don't know, but I have a stab at these questions.

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Transcript

Opening And Attack Overview

MG 0:00

From a groove to a kill. Yes, if you will excuse the rather lame play on James Bond's title. What I want to do today is look at the attempt to assassinate the deputy head of Russian military intelligence. Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast of varying length, frequency, and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise Software Company Conductor. So on Friday morning, Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, the first deputy head of Russian military intelligence, which is technically ever since 2010 called the GU Gol Gesha, the main directorate of the General Staff, though frankly, pretty much everyone still uses its uh old name, Gru Gru, the main intelligence directorate. Anyway, pedantry aside, so Alexeyev was coming out of an apartment in a rather undistinguished block on Volokolamsko Yoshose in northwestern Moscow when in the vestibule he was approached by a gunman who shot him twice. The remember Alexeev is an ex-Special Forces Petznaz officer who grappled with him. The gunman got one more shot off that hit him in the chest, but then rather than finishing the job, fled at that stage. An ambulance was called. Apparently, work he was worked on for 15 minutes in the ambulance before they headed off, but they managed to get him to the hospital in time. He was in intensive care, he was in a coma, but apparently he is now out of the coma and out of the danger zone. So we'll have to see what happens. Now, according to the FSB, which is always much, much better in the response rather than the prevention, the ringleader was one Lubomir Korba, a Russian citizen, though according to some reports, actually resident in Tyrnopil in Ukraine. And he was actually detained in Dubai. Remember, Dubai is one of those places you can fly to directly from Moscow still, with the assistance of the local police, and has been extradited back to Russia already. And his accomplices were, again, according to the FSB, two Russian citizens, Viktor Varsin and Zinaida Serebritskaya. Now Varsin has already been arrested. The suggestion is actually he was the gunman, and Serebritskaya, who actually had an apartment in the same block, or at least was renting one and may therefore have been the person who was like keeping an eye on Alexeyev. Anyway, according to the FSB, he she has managed to escape to Ukraine. So what I'm going to start with is just a little sense of who Alexeyev is. Vladimir Stepanovich Alexeyev, because of his middle name, he's very widely known within the service as Stepanic. He was born in 1961 in the village of Galodki, which is in the Vinnyzia region of the Ukrainian, what was then Soviet Socialist Republic, which is one of the reasons why there's particular bad blood, given his role currently in the covert and not so covert campaigns against Ukraine. Anyway, when he left school, he joined the military, he went to the Ryazan Airborne School, which is the main paratrooper training academy, and also something of a conveyor belt for recruits into the Spiritznaz Special Forces, which he indeed very quickly joined. He rose, so he basically he is a battlefield officer who then went into military intelligence rather than someone who was, I don't know, a military translator or similar. Anyway, he became chief of the intelligence directorate of the Moscow and then Far Eastern military districts before actually getting a job at the main headquarters of the GRU, the so-called aquarium. So you've got to understand in some ways the GRU is very crudely, one could divide it between three different camps. There is so-called Agentura, the agency, which is the overall name for the intelligence gathering side. So, yes, in part this is, well, these days cyber, but even before radio technical and other forms of surveillance, satellites, and in particular, human intelligence officers, you know, classically placed as defence attaches in embassies and the like. So that's one. Then there's the analytic and management side of the agency. And then there are the so-called sapogi, which means boots or jack boots or great boots or whatever. Anyway, that's the slightly dismissive term for the ones who are in and come in from the Spetsnas. So that's it. He's he's more on the, shall we say, blue collar or sort of hard man side of the GRU, but clearly highly capable. And he became the head of the 14th Directorate, which is the overall responsible for special forces. I have a feeling that he might have been a protege of Nikolai Kostetschka, Colonel General Kostetschka, who was another ex Betznaz who, in fact, had served in Afghanistan, who headed the 14th and then became first deputy director and chief of staff of the GRU, retiring in 2009. So basically, when he left the 14th Directorate, he handed it to Alexeyev. And likewise Alexeev followed the same trajectory, and two years later in 2011, he became first deputy director and chief of staff. He played a key role in the planned planning of the seizure of Crimea in 2014. Then also in the undeclared covert operations in the Donbass, this sort of weird mix of insurrection, proxy war, and just general sort of opportunistic campaign by ultranationalists in Russia. Anyway, so he was involved in that. And that also involved the standing up of the mercenary army known as Wagner. So at this point he was already kind of in some ways a curator of Wagner, though his relationship with Prigozhin was going to be a rather complex one. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the entrepreneur who ran Wagner. He would then get his gold star of the hero of Russia for the operations that he managed in Syria, where again, particularly Spetsnas will play a crucial role, but so too also was the wider panoply of military intelligence gathering. He would be sanctioned by the Americans, the Brits, and I think the Europeans, firstly for the GRU's role in election manipulation in 2016, and then also for the Skripal assassination attempt, the use of Novichok in the British town of Salisbury. Now, I don't think that he was, for example, involved personally in the cyber operation side of things, for example, the social media manipulation, all that in 2016 American elections. But the point is, all of these so-called active measures, in other words, not about intelligence gathering, but about trying to bring about specific effects in other countries, that all fell under Alexeyev's remake, which is why he was sanctioned. There's talk that he had a key role in planning the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. I'm not entirely convinced that that's true. I mean, he may have played a role, but I it's very hard to find any kind of professional who played a role. But on the other hand, given that he is essentially a spook and a special forces officer, rather than a conventional military specialist who had gone through all the various military training academies and programs and such like, that might help explain this bizarre focus on the idea that with a handful of special operations and special operators you can somehow seize a country. So it is entirely possible, and if so, he actually also shares some of the blame for the catastrophic failure of that initial invasion. But it is certainly noteworthy that after the invasion, the primary role for operations inside Ukraine was actually shifted from the FSB, which is still active there, but just simply now is secondary, and the GIUGU was given primacy, which actually suggests that there was a perception, frankly, that they were there to clear up some of the mess. So, whatever Alexeyev's role, I think it is clear that the FSB played a much, much more important one in framing that initial invasion. Now, when the invasion happened, it was Alexeyev himself who personally denied Wagner any role in it. Why? Well by that time he had already, on the orders from Defence Minister Choigu, stood up an alternative, a rival, Redut. So it was Redut that actually played a considerable role in that initial operation, and as a result it was Redut that was decimated in it. So that's why he had to turn to Wagner, and this is something that Anna Artunian and I discuss in our book Downfall, there must have been a point of considerable satisfaction for Prigozin. That after Alexeev had frankly humiliated him with Redut, and when Prigozin had complained about this, you know, really put him in his place, that now Alexeev was actually having to come crawling back to him. But still, that's what happened. Wagner came in, took up a lot of the slack in that crucial first year, year and a half of the war, when the Russian military was definitely scrabbling around for warm bodies to throw into the meat grinder. But nonetheless, it certainly is clear that there was a certain amount of bad blood that was developed by then. In spring of 2022, Alexeev would also play a key role as one of the negotiators who managed to get the defenders of the Azov style works in Mariupol to surrender, this huge Soviet-era industrial plant which had become this little redoubt, and the defenders had been hanging on with extraordinary fortitude. Anyway, Alexeyev got them to surrender, and it very much seems to be that he did so promising very enlightened, proper treatment of the prisoners of war that by all accounts was then a promise that was betrayed. Again, more room for bad blood, including particularly from the right wing Azov. I don't say brigade, it's itch it has expanded steadily in size. But anyway, who had supplied so many of the defenders of Azov's style and therefore felt particularly keenly of the betrayal that followed. Since then, he, or rather his little empire within the GU has been responsible for this escalating campaign of covert operations, subversion, sabotage, and even the occasional assassination in Europe. In June of 2023, during Prigozhin's mutiny, it was Alexeyev who happened to be in Rostovon Don when Prigozin seized it, and alongside Deputy Defence Minister Yunusbek, Yevkurov was seen on camera, I wouldn't say negotiating with Prigozhin, frankly it's it's chatting with him. Now Alexey would later denounce Prigozin and the mutiny at the whole, but at the time he seems frankly very relaxed. Yevkurov, who is definitely a soldier of much more the old school, is actually quite clearly bristling at what he sees as Prigozhin's disloyalty. But when Prigozin says that they're just there that after Shoigu and Gerasimov, it's Alexeyev who laughingly says, Oh take them. Nonetheless, he doesn't seem to have suffered. I mean he then later made the ritual TV appeal to the Wagnerites, getting them to surrender. And after Prigozin's quote unquote mysterious death, not there is much mystery there, it's Alexeyev who essentially took over the liquidation of Wagner, with the elements that were still inside Russia being rolled into the Defence Ministry, and most of Wagner's operations in Africa coming under the this new body called the Africa Corps, which is very closely controlled by the GIU, GU, and thus Alexeyev. Now, in January 2024, there were actually rumors during the rounds in Russian social media channels that Alexeyev had been dismissed, but it turned out not to be the case. And in fact, in April of that year, it was reported that he had been collecting compromising information on Russian Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov, who has since been sacked, court-martialed, sentenced to 15 years in prison on corruption charges. So to be honest, this seems to have been more of a kind of uh spat between subalterns. Clearly, Ivanov was trying to get rid of Alexeyev, but the point is the Defence Ministry, its relationship with the GU is a complex one because technically the GU is part of the general staff apparatus. So really it's the chief of the general staff who, in practice, especially in time of war or equivalent to war, actually has the power of hiring and firing in this context. It's a little bit more complex, it's certainly not sort of cut and dried, but Timur Ivanov clearly wasn't able to get rid of Alexeyev, and Alexeyev presumably contributed to Ivanov's downfall. So look, this is a guy who, as I say, he comes from the Special Forces side. He is, by all accounts, very capable, able, gets on well with his subordinates, again, that kind of bluff man of action type approach. He is capable of running a large and varied department that's carrying out a whole variety of different operations. He can play the political game to a degree. Let's be honest, he's not a particularly public-facing individual, but nonetheless, you know, when he has to, he can get rough and dirty in the internal politics of the Russian military, which after all is not just simply a war fighting or national defence structure, it is also so heavily riven by factionalism and for so many an instrument for enrichment. And for the record, Alexeyev, his family seem to live quite well. Though there's a little asterisk there which I will come to in a moment. Anyway, so who is to blame? Well, there's always the possibility that while we tend to assume that there's some kind of grand political narrative or whatever, that this is entirely personal. There is the claim on the Ogpu Vecheka telegram site, which often has a lot of well this is the trouble. It has a lot of kind of what purports to be insider gossip, a certain amount of which is indeed accurate insider gossip, which makes it all the more irritating because it's always hard to tell that from the stuff that is just simply froth and water cooler conversations and such like. Anyway, they have claimed that in fact he was there with his mistress and their child, and that explains why a man who has a sixty-one-year-old wife, he himself is sixty-four or five from memory, who has a large, nice estate and home outside of Moscow, but why he was in this frankly not especially salubrious apartment block in the outer suburbs. Now the alternative answer has been in fact that this was a safe house or temporary accommodation. But anyway, so you know, it might be that there's some kind of personal dimension here. Though, to be perfectly honest, the thought that that would then lead to a shootout in an apartment block, I'm not convinced necessarily. Then there is the suggestion that it was precisely because of his perceived betrayal of Wagner. And the interesting thing is that although yes, there is a a lot of bad blood between him and many of the figures within Wagner still, I can't see this as being something that plays out a couple of years later. I was talking to someone in Moscow who does have kind of connections into that world, who said, look, you know, if it had happened in the heat of the moment, sure, but these are not the kind of people who nurture long-term plots. And I think it's fair to say that the Wagnerites in the main are not long-term sophisticated planners. So I I don't know. I actually have a sense that that notion is being spread really to cause mischief because it tends to come often from quarters which tend to be a little bit closer to the pro-Ukrainian side of things. Then of course there's the perennial suggestion that it was the Kremlin that did it, so the ho ho ho's that off, push him out of a window. I get so tired with this whole windows um meme. But the Kremlin isn't going to do this. Why? Because, well, for a start, it's embarrassing, deeply embarrassing to the security apparatus to have another general killed. And frankly, if the Kremlin wants to get rid of someone, yes, occasionally it will use violence, just ask Evgeny Prigoshin and his amazing collapsing plane. But actually, look, it can just have people arrested. It can be shocked, shocked to discover that they were taking bribes. You know, it's it's so easy. In a system which almost encourages everyone to be corrupt, what that means is that everybody has a skeleton in their cupboard, and the Kremlin can always decide whose cupboard to have a look through. So again, I don't really buy that. So the obvious answer is that it was the Ukrainians, though the Ukrainians clearly have not just not admitted it, but they have issued a denial through their foreign minister. But here's the the whole question, the whole dilemma. Would they risk torpedoing the current talks that are going on? And perhaps even more importantly, earning Donald Trump's wrath for breaking his peace process. I mean, this is clearly what uh the Russians are are pushing. Foreign Minister Lavrov has claimed it that it was a provocation and it was all about breaking up the peace talks. And I I concur that it doesn't really seem to make sense, especially since remember there are two Ukrainian intelligence agencies that really have been at the fore of carrying out assassinations and sabotage missions inside Russia. One is the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine, and the other is Hur, which is the Ukrainian counterpart to the GU, military intelligence. Now, until very recently, who was the head of Hur? It was Kirillo Budanov, who has now become both Zelensky's chief of staff, but also is currently the chief negotiator. So why would Hur carry out an attack that would actually embarrass their own former boss, whom they seem to hold in a degree of respect that approaches reverence at times? Now, I don't think this is going to make the Russians walk away from the peace talks. I think they're just simply going to use this to try and earn brownie points. You see, look at those unreliable Ukrainians, they're trying to disrupt the talks, but we are rising above it and are still willing to have this dialogue. You know, the the kind of propaganda line. But on the other hand, I mean, although we've already had unnamed sources in, I think it was the Washington Post saying, oh, it'd be pretty crazy for the Ukrainians to do it, I think we have to acknowledge the limits of that argument. I mean, after all, hey, I thought it was pretty crazy for Putin to invade Ukraine in 2022. So, you know, it it is possible for countries to do things that don't seem to be directly in their interests. And indeed, it may be that in fact Ukraine is carrying out a kind of counterpart to the Russian talk and fight policy. Because after all, they have not, apart from the very brief energy ceasefire really as a SOP to Trump, they have not let up in their offensive operations even while negotiating with Ukrainians. I mean their idea is no, you negotiate best when you keep the other side under pressure. Well, this could be the Ukrainians saying, fine, you want to play it that way, we will play it that way too. We'll carry on negotiating, but who knows who we're gonna kill of your officers in the meantime. So that is possible. However, for that to be effective, that would need to be being communicated to the Russians. They need to know that there is a message there. And I haven't seen any indications that there has been. It is also possible that this was an operation that really had gone beyond the point of no return. Remember, so many of these operations are not carried out by what we could call card carrying Ukrainian intelligence officers, but local proxies, sometimes who are paid, sometimes who are driven. Driven by an ideological commitment to punish the Putin regime, often who are suborned, who are blackmailed, or just simply are dupes who don't know the what they're doing. I mean that's a lot easier when you had things like the the bombing of the Crimea Bridge, in which actually the poor bugger who was driving the truck bomb, he just thought he was just taking a standard load across into Crimea rather than that it was about to explode with considerable force, killing him instantly. Now, in that context, you know, you do trade off a certain degree of con detailed control for arm's length deniability and just simply not putting your own experience and dedicated officers at risk. So, you know, it might just simply be that they, you know, although in hindsight they decided actually we we we wish it hadn't happened, they just couldn't do anything about it. I don't think it's very likely, but I just throw that out as a possibility. What I found particularly interesting, though, is as people try to make sense of it, within a certain fraction of the Russian nationalist commentariat, there are people who are suggesting that in fact this attack was driven by anti-peace extremists within Kyiv. So in other words, this was not a kind of officially sanctioned government operation. But if I can quote one social media post, seeing Zelensky on the verge of agreeing a peace deal, the SBU, the Ukrainian Security Service, is doing what it can to prevent this. Now, on the face of it, this is conspiratorial nonsense. And especially quite bizarre because it's conspiratorial nonsense coming from Russian ultranationalists, which actually exonerate Zelensky. And yes, I think that it's highly unlikely, but I'm not entirely, totally 100% willing to discount it. Because there is some kind of form. Back in 2022, before the invasion, there was a Ukrainian banker, Denis Kireyev, who had a lot of Russian contacts and friends, and who also, it turned out, was an asset for Hur. And Budanov credited Kirayev with providing absolutely crucial advanced intelligence, particularly about the fact that the Russians were going to try and seize Antonov Airport at Hostomel and use that as a kind of bridgehead into Kyiv. Anyway, so it was crucial to prevent Kyiv from actually falling in those first few hours and days of the invasion. Now, Kireev was then part of the team that were involved in peace negotiations in Belarus in Gormel on the 28th of February, so in other words, only a few days after the invasion. He was due also to be in the next round of talks, but his body was found in Kiev. He'd been killed through execution style and his body left in the street. Now, according to Budanov, and I think this has generally been accepted, it was the SBU that was behind his killing. Indeed, in 2023, Zelensky's then advisor, Mikhailo Patalyak, said that his death was a tragic mistake, possibly due to quote unquote poor coordination between Hur and the SBU. Now, that's entirely possible. Maybe SBU thought that Kyrieev was actually a traitor and an asset for the Russians rather than for Hur. But it still doesn't explain, though, why instead of arresting him and putting him on trial, why he was shot in the back of the head in the street, and his body was just left there, and that the SBU kept so quiet about it. There's clearly something going on here. Now, according to a subsequent investigation by the Wall Street Journal, the man who was actually responsible to this was the SBU's counterintelligence chief, Alexander Paklad, who has the charming nickname of the Strangler. I don't know why, and frankly, I'm probably happy remaining in ignorance. Anyway, Paklad's rivalry with Budanov is very, very well known. And the suspicion then is that actually this was more part of personal turf war games and such like rather than anything else. And of course, since then Paklad has masterminded a series of assassinations inside Russia. Paklad was also very much a man in the circle of Andrey Yermak, who was Zelensky's former chief of staff, the man whose job Budanov now has. And as of last month, Paklad is the first deputy head of the SBU. Now look, let's put aside Paklad personally. I have no idea if he was at all responsible or not, or anything like that. But I really would hate to think that anyone inside the Ukrainian state would be so willing either to do Budanov a bad turn or to undermine a peace process that they may well think is not in Ukraine's interests. But nonetheless, to think that people would still willfully carry out an operation intended to disrupt it is a rather alarming one. And let's be absolutely clear, and this is depressing that I do feel I need to insert these caveats. I'm not saying at all that this is the case. Just that I wish for my own peace of mind I could be 100% certain it wasn't, not, I don't know, 95%. Because let's remember, after all, the think of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, which for so long had been blamed widely on the Russians, including by the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, but that is now looking increasingly likely to have been a Ukrainian operation, and the only question is actually whether this was approved by Zelensky or not. So look, that there is some suggestion that there's a possibility for Maverick operations carried out within the Ukrainian security apparatus. I don't know. As I say, the the most likely outcome is just simply that this is a man who the Ukrainians absolutely consider to be a legitimate military target. They built up an operation, they saw an opportunity, and they carried it out because they thought, well, actually the chance of getting Alexeyev is worth the potential risk to a peace process that at the moment its likely outcome is still very, very unclear. But anyway, whatever the reasons, this clearly is a significant moment. So let's take a break and then let me talk about quite what it might mean. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conductor, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or on Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. Okay, so how does the Alexeyev shooting matter? Well, first of all, it's clearly another serious black eye for the FSB, the Federal Security Service, particularly the DVKR, the military counterintelligence service, which, although frankly, its main role seems to be just simply watching the military to keep an eye on them, that they don't deviate from the party line. In theory, at least, they are also meant to be carrying out the kind of counterintelligence operations which would protect military targets. Now, is that really going to mean anything? Who knows? The FSB has proven to be entirely Teflon coded in the past. It can blunder time and time and time again, and their little fanboy Putin still doesn't seem to do anything about it. So, you know, I don't think it's going to in any way sort of affect the FSB. It might finally mean that they provide a bit more security for generals, which is a fairly obvious thing to have addressed by now. But we'll have to wait and see. And in particular, it's also worth noting that while the focus is inevitably on the FSB, who will of course use the arrests as their sort of chance to try and distract from the intelligence blunder that allowed the attack to happen in the first place. It's also worth noting where is the FSO? The Federal Protection Service. Now it's primarily Putin's Secret Service, his bodyguard, but it's also meant to protect senior government figures. Now I can understand how you can't protect every single lieutenant general. Russia has a lot of generals. But the deputy head of military intelligence, in what is in effect a time of war, when a whole series of other officers have been targeted and many of them killed, I would have thought that someone would have thought that actually Alexeyev should fit into the category of people who should have FSO officers. Now it's worth noting that he could well have just simply messed up. It could well be that he had a protection team, but especially if he was off visiting a mistress, maybe he told them to take take the evening and morning off. He certainly did have a driver who presumably is a driver bodyguard, who was waiting for him downstairs, but again, that's not much help when you're on the twenty fourth floor. So, you know, it it is possible that it'll transpire that he had a bit more security than than this would suggest, but until we we hear that, one has to presume not. Will it have an effect on the negotiations, especially given that it's actually Alexeyev's immediate superior? GU Chief Admiral Igor Kostiuk, who is currently leading them? Now, I I don't think so. Again, I think I suspect that they, I mean, who knows, Kostyuk may well be furious, he may be relieved, who can tell? But I don't think that the Russians are gonna regard this as an excuse to break away. As I said, I think I think they will just simply try to leverage the attack for what political capital they can, particularly with the Americans. But yeah, Budanov is not exactly a shrinking violet. I don't think they're gonna be in a position to browbeat him by any means. Part of the central thesis behind this campaign of assassinations is presumably that Kyiv hopes that they will rattle the Russian elite and particularly the military elite sufficiently that they begin to put pressure on the Kremlin to actually end the war because they don't know if they're going to be in the crosshairs next. So far, I have to say I'm not seeing any signs of that. Again, maybe in part it's just a problem because, as I say, there are too many Russian generals anyway. So you can still think that the odds are pretty good, or else you just simply accept that it's uh a risk of a time of war, or just simply you know full well that you can't afford to look like any kind of lily-livered coward, and therefore you have to affect no concern at all for your own security. For whatever reason, though, at the moment I see no signs that this is leading to any kind of faltering within the elite. If anything, there is a chance that it brings pressure to bear on Putin to escalate. Now, I know it always seems difficult for people to think of anyone being able to conceive of the Russian campaign as being half-hearted as missiles and drones continue to slam into Ukrainian cities and power stations and such like, but nonetheless, it is always worth stressing that although it's a small minority within the ultra-nationalist community, there are those who are exasperated, who actually do feel that the reason why this war is not going better is that Putin continues to try and temporize, that he continues to try and fight a war on the cheap and on the easy, so that most Russians are not really feeling that they're in a wartime situation, that there's no mass mobilization of reservists, there's not a use of conscripts, that there is not, for example, the imposition of a martial law regime, which they argue would actually make these kind of attacks less likely. And certainly the Alexeyev attack has already prompted a resurgence in these kind of claims and demands. And it's actually also, I think, brought Tsagrad, the media outlet with which I continue to have an unhealthy fascination, but while it's always been on the extreme end of politics, nonetheless I think it's been particularly intemperate following the assassination attempt. Let me just read a couple of passages. Shots fired from the twenty fourth floor of a Moscow high rise have exposed a fatal problem. While our best men are being systematically murdered in their homes, we prefer the sleek special military operation to the honest word war. The assassination attempt on Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev, the brains behind our military intelligence, that's a bit rough on Kostyuk, struck a raw nerve. Kyiv continues its reign of terror, while Moscow continues to fight like gentlemen. But in war, and especially in high politics, there are no gentlemen left, and the price of these refined manners is the bullet riddled bodies of the military elite and a humiliating position at the negotiations in Abu Dhabi. Do we intend to fight or just to pretend? Now huge amounts of hyperbole amidst the spittle flecked madness of this kind of parapassage, but nonetheless Tsargrad is speaking for a certain constituency. It quotes the military observer Viktor Baranetz Ukraine's terrorist network is actively tracking down generals who are extremely poorly protected. This saddens me. We've done nothing to protect them. They could have lived in the headquarters during the war. The fact is, Moscow is saturated with terrorists. We need to protect our generals. Not only have thirteen generals died on the battlefield, we've lost another five in the rear. None of our generals have security. They drive around Moscow in civilian cars as an indication of the level of security. And Alexeyev is the second in command, the first deputy head of the main intelligence directorate. Now, look, it is perfectly true that both sides are fighting a shadow war, and up to now, not only are senior Russian figures in much, much less secure circumstances than one might imagine, but also, to be perfectly honest, Ukraine has not suffered anything like the same kind of toll as Russia had. I mean, Russia, in the last 14 months, we've had Lieutenant General Igor Kirilov, who's the head of Erke Bezet, which is the chemical, biological, and nuclear defence troops. Anyway, he was blown up in December of 2024. Lieutenant General Yaroslav Moskalik, Deputy Chief of the Main Operations Directorate. Main Operations Directorate is the real brains of the General Staff, by the way. So the Deputy Chief, that's quite a significant figure. Anyway, he was killed in April of 2025. And then we had Lieutenant General Faniel Sarvarov. Moral of the story is don't be a Lieutenant General, by the way. Anyway, Faniel Sarvarov, Chief of the Operational Training Directorate of the General Staff, who was killed just recently in December. Now, think of it the other way around. Offhand, and it may be that I'm missing someone, but the only assassination, the only serious assassination that the Ukrainians have suffered that I can think of, is Colonel Ivan Varonich of the SBU, who was assassinated in Kyiv in July. Now, Voronich was a significant figure within the Spetsnas, quite possibly also in operations inside Russia. And what happened is the FSB hired two hitmen from Azerbaijan through an organized crime network. Again, this is one of the force multipliers that the Russians use, their connections to not just Russian but wider organized crime. Anyway, they they used him to they they used these assassins to kill Varonich. But that's it, that's about it. There have been sabotage and similar attacks, particularly on infrastructure, but even that, nothing on the scale or sophistication, as the bombing of the Crimea Bridge in 2022, or Operation Spiderweb in June 2025, when we had all these container loads of remote controlled drones implanted around Russian airbases and attacking their strategic bombers. So there definitely is a real asymmetry here. Now both sides are ruthless and cynical. As I said, they use dupes, they groom those with ideological commitments, they use blackmail. I mean there was a series of cases, for example, of firebombings of Russian military draft offices, Vojenkomati, carried out by pensioners. Because what would happen is hackers would essentially steal their funds, and then they'd be told that if you want to get them back, then you've got to go and firebom a Vojenkomat. All is fair in love in war, I think is the uh general assumption here. So is it just that the Ukrainians, frankly, are better at it? It may be the case. Um certainly they are highly motivated, they probably have more freedom of manoeuvre, even though they stem from the same Soviet-era structures of the GRU and the KGB, nonetheless, clearly the Ukrainians, just as they've shown much more initiative and dynamism and flexibility and imagination in so many other aspects of the war, so too in the covert war. It could also be that there's a series of just different priorities. I mean, the the Russians, as I say, have focused largely on infrastructure, whereas the Ukrainians have looked also heavily at people. Yes, we've got the generals, but also there was the killing of Daria Dugina, probably intended for her father, the ideologue Alexander Dugin, that was back in 2022. Then there was the outspoken propagandist Vladin Tatarsky, who was killed in St. Petersburg in April 2023, when again what was probably a dupe brought a bomb to a public event of his. And it could well be that the Ukrainians are just simply more willing to take risks. Because it's after all worth noting just the toll of losses. If you read the Russian press, frankly you'll soon notice that scarcely a day goes by without the reports of someone being arrested or someone being killed by the security forces, preventing them from carrying out one of these quote unquote terrorist operations. I mean I just looked at just the last few days. Tuesday, FSB officers detained a 29-year-old, they say foreigner, I'm not quite sure what nationality, anyway, in Moscow, who, on orders from the Ukrainian intelligence services, was preparing to detonate an explosion at an energy facility in the Moscow region, and he was caught with an improvised bomb containing five kilos of explosive. Wednesday seemed to have been clear, but then on Thursday you had two cases. A 21-year-old known as Maxim G, found guilty of preparing and assisting in the sabotage in St. Petersburg. He was sentenced in court to nine years. And Andrei Smirnov, a Russian hacker who collaborated with the Ukrainians, sentenced to 16 years in prison for treason. Then on Friday, FSB officers detained a 48-year-old from Kabarov's krai on suspicion of spying for Hur. And on that same day, well, Alexeev was shot. So, you know, we have to realise that the Russians are not entirely incompetent. They are actually quite good, unfortunately, at this kind of mass security statism. But, you know, so long as the Ukrainians are still happy to keep pushing, they are going to have successes. This is it. It's in some ways you don't you don't care how many failures you have as long as you have the successes. But does all of this matter in terms of the big picture? You know, um Lieutenant General Kirilov of the Chemical Defence Corps is buried, and Major General Alexei Urtishev takes over, who, by the by, as near as I can tell, comes from a very distinguished family of military aristocrats dating back to the 17th century. But who is to say that Urtishev is going to be any less competent than Kirilov? He may be even better. Certainly, as I say, there's no sign that generals are refusing assignments or promotions to Lieutenant General Standard, or fearfully petitioning the Kremlin for peace or anything. But nonetheless it does matter, I think. First of all, okay, so maybe the target that you're going for is going to be replaced, that's the importance of a chain of command, but perhaps the target is particularly competent. I mean, who knows? I don't know who would have been in position to take over from Alexeyv if he died, and who presumably will be taking over in temporary status anyway while Alexev recovers. But it may well be that this individual is going to be less competent, less confident, or just simply is going to take time to be brought up to strength. So you create certain amounts of disruption within the military structures. As the toll of attacks increase, it certainly does convey this sense of a state that either doesn't care about protecting its people or just simply can't do so. And that's important because once you create this kind of attitude, then everyone is going to be basically paranoid on the lookout for constant attacks. They're going to be feeling the need that they have to look under their car every time for bombs. And generally, again, this creates a mood which is important. In some ways, it's almost a little bit of a parallel with that period of drone panic we had in the West, where every drone that was spotted anywhere near an airport, or indeed what wasn't a drone, but was assumed to be a drone, that was suddenly seen as evidence of some kind of nefarious Russian campaign. Whereas almost all of these turned out to be nothing to do with the Russians, even if they were drones in the first place. But the point is that mood of paranoia meant people were looking. If you look hard enough, you will find something that looks like a drone, and then you will lock down your airport and you will have all kinds of disruption. And also it conveys that sense that the Russians can reach out and cause all kinds of trouble to us in our day-to-day lives with impunity. Well, likewise, if people start to actually think that the Ukrainians can do this, it also means that any time that you have a general who's involved in a car crash or who dies of a heart attack, someone will assume it was because his brakes were cut or he was poisoned with some subtle toxin. And it all does put pressure on Putin by activating those ultranationalists so that he faces this pressure to escalate. Now, there's no signs that he wants to do so at the moment. But nonetheless, you know, it could be that yes, it forces him to be a little bit more amenable to the idea of peace, or it could push him to feeling that he has to escalate, even if it is politically and socially very, very disruptive, and in the process actually could well undermine his own regime. Because the trouble is the longer he leaves it, and this is a classic Putin pathology, is that when he's faced with a tough decision, he puts it off as long as possible. Often then his hand is forced, and actually things are even more problematic because he has delayed so long. Because at the moment, Putin being Putin, he is dodging the issue. He has well, through his spokesman Peskov, he has continued to refuse to weigh in on whether or not there ought to be more security for the generals. It's just, oh well, that's for the military, that's for the security services to talk about. Putin is, as ever, absent without leave when it comes to difficult and embarrassing situations. And again, that does undermine actually the whole credibility of Putin as the supreme commander-in-chief, the great father of the nation. Wars are, after all, fought not just on the battlefield, but much more decisively in the heads and hearts of respective regimes and populations. Now, in this context, look, predicting and quantifying the precise effects of any operation is never easy. Well, actually, let's be honest, it's impossible. And I suspect that everyone, each country has a tendency to overestimate their own capabilities, what they can do to the enemy, and underestimate their enemy's resilience. And in the process, the danger is of course that something that was meant to demoralize might actually stiffen sinews. Whether we're talking about the blitz in World War II that didn't push the British population into surrender, the CIA's revolving array of attempts to kill Fidel Castro, or indeed actually thinking about it, the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich, who was the senior SS officer in Czechoslovakia during World War II, and his assassination by Czechs who were trained and brought in by the SOE, the Special Operations Executive. It was a successful operation, but it provoked reprisals that were extraordinarily brutal even by Nazi standards, which is saying something. So it's often regarded as a technical success but an operational disaster. And in fact, generally, and I know I'm wandering off at a little bit of a tangent here, but don't worry. The podcast will be over soon. Generally, the the the SOE, which after all had been established in World War II by Churchill with the mandate to set Europe ablaze, was certainly at the time considered a success, and General Eisenhower it was, who credited its campaign with shortening the war in Europe by anything up to six months. But since then there has been an interesting and lively debate about whether it actually was really that effective, even though yes, it carried out a whole variety of attacks, but did it take resources away from other better uses? Honestly, I've not yet been convinced that they were as counterproductive as some people have claimed. Despite, though, the terrible toll on the agents, which again in some ways is a parallel with the Ukrainian campaign. But the point is here is just simply that there is room for serious debate. And my concern is that, as with so many covert operations, the enthusiasm for the process and satisfaction at tactical achievement, and particularly in this kind of a context, just that sheer sense of satisfaction when you kill the general of what is a brutal invading force. Well, that may well often eclipse a sober assessment of the value of the campaign. Now again, let me be clear, I'm not saying that the Ukrainians shouldn't be carrying out these these attacks. I'm just wondering if the campaign against the generals I suspect that you either need to be carrying out attacks at a higher tempo if you really want to start to rattle the Russian officer corps, or else it may well be worth thinking about whether or not other targets make more sense. I mean, for example, the recent combination of COVID operations and drone and missile strikes against Russian fuel infrastructure, I thought looked particularly promising, but seems to have dwindled away now. So I think it's a question of these kinds of attacks, they are, for want of a better word, and I know we're talking about people's blood here, but nonetheless, they are exciting and they are dramatic and they are eye-catching, and that all has a political value, because after all, politics is about changing people's minds, and to do that you have to communicate things to them. And to communicate, we can find you wherever, that may well be effective. But at present, I think it's still a bit of a coin toss as to whether or not that the outcome is a more amenable Russia or actually an even more vicious and violent policy being adopted. And the sad truth of the matter is we're only really going to know in hindsight. By the way, if this whole question of covert operations and the like is something of interest, let me just flag up Rory Cormac's book, Disrupt and Deny, Spies, Special Forces and the Secret Pursuit of British Foreign Policy from Oxford University Press, which I think is an excellent and judicious study of post-war British operations, which are rather less extensive, but sometimes as subtle as the vapourings of today's Russian propagandists who after all see MI6's hand behind their every setback. So Rory Cormac disrupt and deny. All I can say in hindsight, though, when we come to the more paranoid end of Russian pundits and Alexeyev's killing, just thank heavens that they see the CIA as more SBU's patron than MI6. Because otherwise there's no doubt they will already be adding the Alexeyev shooting to their list of MI6's imagined crimes against the poor, benighted Russian people. Thanks very much for listening. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.