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MOSCOW (Reuters) – The head of the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, accused by the West of perpetrating a series of indiscriminate attacks, died Wednesday after "a long and serious illness," the Russian ministry said. of the defense.
FILE PHOTO – A general view shows the headquarters of the General Directorate of the Armed Forces Staff of the Russian Federation, formerly known as the Directorate-General for Intelligence (GRU), in Moscow on 4 October 2018. REUTERS / Stringer
According to the state press agency TASS quoting the ministry, Igor Korobov, 62 years old and who had been running the spy agency since 2016, had been appointed Hero of Russia for his service in the post office, the highest distinction awarded by the state.
Britain has accused the GRU of attempting to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter with a nerve agent in the city of Salisbury, the Netherlands. accused of attempting to hack the global monitoring of chemical weapons, and the US intelligence services claimed to have attempted to hack into the 2016 presidential election.
Russia denies all these allegations.
Rumors about Korobov's fate have mushroomed since an unconfirmed Russian media announced that he had been summoned by President Vladimir Putin as a result of the Skripal affair and severely criticized for it. This operation left the Skripals alive and the GRU a target of Western media mockery.
Korobov was absent this month in Moscow from a ceremony during which Putin and other senior officials celebrated the centenary of the GRU. The Russian leader praised his talent and his "unique abilities".
Agency members, widely known by its former GRU acronym, are an example for the next generation of military spies, said Putin, himself a former intelligence officer, citing their willingness to sacrifice everything "for the homeland ".
SOVIET VETERAN
The death of Korobov paves the way for the appointment of a successor to the head of an agency that, according to intelligence experts, has intensified its secret missions as tension rises between Russia and the West, which imposed sanctions in Moscow for its annexation of the Crimea of Ukraine.
Asked last month about the possibility of an upheaval in the Ministry of Defense following the Skripal case, the Kremlin said that the low quality of the allegations brought to the GRU did not justify such changes.
The United States has included the name of Korobov on the blacklist of those suspected of having contributed to "undermining cybersecurity on behalf of the Russian government".
Korobov was a veteran of the Soviet Army who served in the air force. According to his official biography, he started working for the GRU in 1985.
Founded in 1918 after the Bolshevik Revolution, the GRU is one of Russia's three main intelligence agencies, alongside the Federal Security Service and the SVR Foreign Intelligence Service.
Report by Maria Tsvetkova and Andrew Osborn; Written by Andrew Osborn; Edited by Cynthia Osterman and Clarence Fernandez
