previously reported by The Telegraph<\/a>, explained how Russia\u2019s GRU military intelligence agency, known for its attacks on foreign soil using highly trained agents, had since turned to using criminal gangs.<\/p>\nIn an interview with The Telegraph last March, Normunds Me\u017eviets, the head of Latvia\u2019s state security service, said: \u201cIn our experience, we don\u2019t see officers of the GRU travelling here physically to our country.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, they stay in Russia where it\u2019s safe. They\u2019re not taking any risks for their own operational and physical security.\u201d<\/p>\n
Instead, GRU officers cultivate sources within criminal gangs to act as intermediaries in the targeted country using online messaging apps such as Telegram.<\/p>\n
These middlemen then dish out tasks to local recruits, who are paid in cryptocurrency and often never know they are working for Russia.<\/p>\n
Kremlin seeking to sow discord within Nato<\/p>\n
The covert nature of the Kremlin-ordered attacks is seen as a deliberate ploy to sow discord among Nato allies.<\/p>\n
Eastern member states, such as Poland or the Baltics, have been vocal in calling out Russia\u2019s aggression in Europe.<\/p>\n
While the Latvians did not explicitly blame Russia, they did confirm the three suspects had been detained under powers used to tackle criminals \u201cproviding assistance to a foreign state in action directed against another state\u201d.<\/p>\n
But those countries further west, such as Italy and Germany, are often unwilling blame Moscow over fears of an escalation.<\/p>\n
It is this division between Western allies that the Kremlin is seeking to expose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On this occasion, the cause was said to be a so-far unexplained fire that had broken out in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[47,924,20,67,450,437,84],"class_list":["post-11656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-europe","tag-nato-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-russia","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-standard","tag-vladimir-putin","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}