Wall Street Journal: New spy unit leads Russia’s shadow war against the West

The Wall Street Journal published a report on a new spy unit that it said is leading what it called Russia’s shadow war against the West, noting that its headquarters is located in the headquarters of Russian military intelligence, on the outskirts of Moscow, and is known as the Aquarium.

The report explained that the name of this unit was the “Special Tasks Department,” and its operations included murder, sabotage, placing explosive devices on Western aircraft, and more.

The report quoted Western intelligence officials as saying that this unit is mysterious and targets the West with covert attacks throughout Europe and elsewhere, and that its creation reflects Moscow’s wartime stance against the West.

According to senior European, US and even Russian intelligence officials, the unit was founded in 2023 in response to Western support for Ukraine and includes veterans of some of Russia’s most daring covert operations in recent years.

The Kremlin sees the West as complicit in Ukraine’s attacks on Russia, such as the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, the killing of senior Moscow officials, and Ukrainian strikes using long-range Western missiles.

The new unit is believed to be behind a series of recent attacks against the West, including an attempted assassination of the CEO of a German arms manufacturer and a plot to place incendiary devices on planes used by shipping giant DHL.

The unit has at least three broad missions, according to Western intelligence officials: carrying out assassinations and sabotage operations abroad, infiltrating Western companies and universities, recruiting and training foreign agents from Ukraine, developing countries and countries considered friendly to Russia, such as Serbia, and running an elite special operations center, known as Senezh, where Russia trains some of its own special forces.

The report included an introduction to some of the Russian supervisors of this unit and the espionage activities and killings they had carried out in the past.

These operations included the poisoning of the double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom, who both survived the poisoning but were seriously physical complications.

The role of the special tasks unit includes overseeing covert operations in Europe and taking over Wagner’s paramilitary operations in Africa after the killing of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in 2023.

Last December, the European Union imposed sanctions on the special task force, without naming it, for orchestrating coups, assassinations, bombings and cyberattacks in Europe and elsewhere.

The United States made similar accusations against members of the unit the same month, offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to five members accused of cyberattacks on Ukraine.

The unit’s aggressive activity peaked last summer but has recently subsided, according to US and European officials.

The lull could be partly to create diplomatic space for Moscow to negotiate with the new US administration, the European intelligence chief said.

Ukraine’s security service said in May it had foiled a Russian plot to set fire to supermarkets and a cafe, and Western intelligence officials revealed that the special task force coordinated another operation days later to set fire to a shopping mall in the Polish capital, Warsaw.

Similar incendiary devices sent by DHL ignited in July at transit centers in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England.

Thomas Haldenwang, the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, told lawmakers in October that if one of the devices had ignited in flight, the plane could have been brought down.

It didn’t just happen because a connecting flight was delayed and the device exploded while it was at the airport, he said.

Security officials said the incendiary devices that ignited in July appeared to be part of a test run to place similar devices on planes bound for North America.

The report said the Special Task Force focused particularly on Germany because Russia sees it as a weak link in NATO, due to its dependence on Russian energy, its growing concern about nuclear escalation, and the sympathy of some of its politicians and voters for Russia.

US intelligence had told Germany it had uncovered a plan to assassinate leaders of Europe’s arms industry, including Armin Papperger, the chief executive of Rheinmetall, the largest supplier of artillery ammunition to Ukraine and which is also building a tank factory in the war-torn country.