The French newspaper Le Figaro said that a report by the foreign intelligence services in Estonia provided detailed information on the methods of work of the Russian Military Intelligence, to depict the threat posed by Moscow and Beijing also to the West.
The newspaper explained - in a report by Nikola Barrot - that the report issued by the Estonian intelligence every year for 7 years, and whose publication date is not related to the Ukrainian crisis - according to the Director General of Intelligence Mikkok Maran - focuses on the activities of the Russian Military Intelligence and confirms the continuation of the threat it poses, noting that You are likely to carry out subversive actions in Ukraine.
The report says that since 2014, the Russian military intelligence has been supervising the organization of "fighting groups" to carry out attacks and assassinations and the establishment of weapons caches in Ukraine, to activate them when receiving the first signal from Russia.
Estonia publicly admits that it wants to teach its partners the methods of Russian intelligence, which distinguishes itself from other counterparts in the world in that it not only collects military information, but also adds to it information on the economy, politics, technology and environment of the targeted areas.
Infrastructure Monitoring
According to the report, the Russian Military Intelligence has 5 active centers at the gates of Europe, the first of which are Center No. 73 in St. Petersburg, No. 264 in Kaliningrad, No. 74 in Smolensk, Center No. 269 in Moscow, and Center No. 1194 in Murmansk "and the main task of its intelligence agents is It is the preparation and support of Russian military operations abroad using operational and tactical information collected about the target country, and thanks to this information, the situation and the deployment of the armed forces in the target country are visualized, especially those related to the presence of NATO (NATO).
Without providing details on the actual number or influence of these networks, Estonian intelligence provides details on the tasks of spies recruited abroad by the Russians, which range from interest in domestic public opinion to monitoring sensitive and military infrastructure, and the Kaliningrad and Murmansk centers in particular work to recruit sailors to monitor facilities in Ports according to the intelligence report.
The newspaper concluded with a quick review of cases referring to activities carried out by the Russian military intelligence in Europe, such as sending agents to try to assassinate Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom, and like the suspicion in 2020 of recruiting a French officer who was working at a NATO base in Italy, and represented the ruling last October On a Russian spy who was working in the Bundestag (German parliament).