In November and December last year, several high-profile diplomatic, government, and military targets in Spain, including Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and the Defense Ministry, as well as the Torrejon de Ardoz air force base and the Zaragoza-based weapons company Instalaza, received letter bombs.
According to authorities in Madrid, the bombs were sent from Spanish territory. Several Ukrainian embassies also received explosive letters or packages containing sheep's eyes and animal excrement. One Ukrainian embassy employee in Madrid suffered minor injuries due to an explosion of one of the packages.
According to Spanish, British, and US intelligence officials quoted by the New York Times in an article on Sunday, a radical group called the Russian Imperial Movement was recruited by the GRU’s Moscow-based 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in order to execute the campaign, meant to jolt Ukraine’s allies.
“Russian officers who directed the campaign appeared intent on keeping European governments off guard and maybe testing out proxy groups in the event Moscow decides to escalate a conflict”, the newspaper quoted an unnamed US source as saying.
Moscow’s ability to use the white supremacist Russian Imperial Movement, which operates military-style training centers in St. Petersburg and which was designated by the United States as a terrorist group in 2020, as a “sometime proxy force is useful to Russian intelligence, particularly because that makes it more difficult for rival countries to attribute actions to the Russian government”, the New York Times added.
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Source: The New York Times
