You should read this remarkable piece from Shaun Walker to understand the lengths to which countries go to train spies and fit them into the society of the country where they are going to conduct spying. And you should read this piece to understand how faulty our perceptions are of people we think we know well. All of us like to believe that we are smart people and that we can figure out other people. This piece will make you revisit that point of view. In fact, if you have to time to read this long piece properly, it will help you understand how deeply you have to research a person to truly know him.
Shaun Walker of The Guardian tells us about a Spanish (Basque to be precise) journalist, Pablo González, who first attended a training course for journalists with him in Wales in 2011 and then helped him covertly enter a Ukrainian military base in 2014. Then in 2022 “González was arrested in the Polish city of Przemyśl. It was a few days after the start of the latest and most brutal episode in Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the first moments of which we had witnessed back on the Crimean base. A terse statement from Polish authorities said that González was suspected of “participation in the activities of a foreign intelligence service”. They claimed he was an agent of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. He faced up to 10 years in prison.”
Mr Walker’s instincts told him that González was innocent and he, like other Western journalists, supported those who were seeking González’s release. “Two years passed after the arrest. Poland released no evidence to the public, and no date was set for a trial. Had the Poles pounced on an innocent journalist, misinterpreting his Russian roots as something more sinister? González’s Spanish wife, Oihana Goiriena, claimed his prolonged detention was aimed at breaking him. “Our hypothesis is that, in the absence of evidence, they want to destroy him morally and emotionally so that he signs whatever they put in front of him,” she told a Spanish journalist after a rare prison visit to see the father of her three children.”
And then in Aug 2024, in the biggest prisoner interchange between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War, González was released by the Poles and accepted by the Russians!
“Putin gathered the returnees inside the airport terminal building. Addressing those in the group who had been sent abroad on official service, he said: “You will all receive state awards, and we will see each other again to talk about your future. For now, I just want to congratulate you on your return home.”
For some of González’s most ardent supporters, this was the moment their convictions about his innocence crumbled. “For the last two years I was always defending Pablo, saying that he needs a proper free and open trial,” one friend, a fellow reporter, told me. “But you’d have to be pretty naive to think that Russia goes around the world rescuing journalists. I think with this handshake [with Putin], he is proven guilty.””
Shaun Walker then dug deep into González’s past to understand when and how the Russian intelligence agency, GRU, recruited him and what intelligence González might have supplied to Kremlin. The picture that the story paints of a clever, committed, well funded Russian intelligence effort to have spies – called “Illegals” – deep inside the West. In Mr Walker’s words: “Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service, used a rare public appearance to announce that González had only been “masquerading as a Spanish journalist”. In reality, claimed Moore, he was a so-called “illegal” – a deep-cover Russian spy, usually one who appropriates a foreign identity for long-term missions abroad. Illegals typically spend years in training to convincingly impersonate foreigners. Polish authorities believed Pablo was really Pavel, and had been born in Moscow.
I have been fascinated by Russian illegals for years, and have even written a book about the history of the programme. Now it turned out that I may have crossed paths with one in the field, without suspecting a thing.”
So how does the GRU pull off such things? Firstly, it would appear that they search for people who genuinely belong to multiple cultures, multiple social circles spanning various Western cities and Russia. That gives such people natural cause to travel into and out of Russia. “Russian illegals traditionally spend years studying language and etiquette, before setting out abroad disguised as foreigners. But “Pablo González” was not a cover identity crafted with painstaking care under the watch of the GRU. It was real, although its owner had another, Russian name too. The two different identities were the product of a mixed heritage, with its origins in the upheaval of the Spanish civil war.”
Secondly, the GRU seeks out people who have a fascination for Russia, ideally a love for the country alongside the belief that Russia has been wronged. “After finishing high school in Barcelona, González went on to study Slavic philology at university in Spain. Later, he began to idealise his childhood in the Soviet Union. “I was a tremendously happy child there, and no one is going to convince me otherwise,” he wrote many years later in a newspaper column, painting the late Soviet Union as a place of prosperity and plenty. In 2004, he acquired a Russian passport under his old name, Pavel Rubtsov.”
Thirdly, the GRU looks for people who have strong social skills so that they can befriend opposition activists and get intimate details of their lives: “González also continued to stay close to the Russian opposition, and in 2018 he went back to Strasbourg, where Alexei Navalny – Putin’s most high-profile critic – was on a rare visit outside Russia, to speak at the European court of human rights. After the hearing, Navalny and a few others went for drinks at the home of one of the lawyers. It was a friends-only gathering, but somehow González made the cut.”
If you want to read our other published material, please visit https://marcellus.in/blog/
Note: The above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. The information provided is intended for educational purposes only. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is also an FME (Non-Retail) with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Additionally, Marcellus is also registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission (“US SEC”) as an Investment Advisor.
MORE FROM Dec WEEK 5
MORE FROM Dec WEEK 5
