Russia's once shadowy spies cast into the light. Why now?
For lovers of spy lore, the past few years have brought unprecedented glimpses behind the curtain of international espionage.
In part thanks to the unpreparedness of many intelligence agencies to grasp the implications of rapidly advancing information technology and the ubiquity of social media, more than one has seen some of its most precious secrets spilled over newspaper front pages.
The latest to suffer this fate is Russia's largest spy agency, the Main Directorate of the Russian General Chief of Staff – still widely known by its traditional acronym, GRU.
If a growing body of official indictments, police reports, diplomatic notes, and journalistic exposés are to be believed, the GRU has been caught red-handed carrying out a range of reckless and aggressive operations against Ukrainian and Western targets. These include the swift and efficient Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the 2016 hacking of the Democratic Party and other cyber-meddling in US
‘How on earth can the GRU work this way?’Unprepared for a new mission?A change of tack in the West