Man bites Dog! Liberal Democrats get tough on Russians…. Can you believe it?
This is the year that the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, so anything can happen, eh?
“President Barack Obama said in a statement that the government would impose sanctions on the FSB and GRU, two Russian intelligence agencies, several senior Russian intelligence officials and private organizations believed to be linked to the hacking. The State Department is also kicking 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying out of the country, Obama said.”
The GRU (Main Intelligence Agency) has always been the principle organization engaging in espionage in foreign countries for the government of the former Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation. The KGB (Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti - Committee For State Security) on the other hand was mainly concerned with counter-espionage and counter-subversion. The KGB made sure that loyal Soviet citizens stayed loyal, both at home and abroad. Of course the KGB got most of the "credit” for spying on foreign countries during the Cold War. The GRU didn’t mind this, even though the agencies were/are bitter rivals, since it meant that the foreign counter-intelligence services were often tracking the wrong people. Read “Inside Soviet Military Intelligence” and “Inside the Aquarium - The Making of a Top Soviet Spy” by Victor Suvorov. Victor Suvorov is the pen name of a GRU Colonel who defected to the British in the 1980’s. The “Aquarium” was the nickname for the GRU HQ building in Moscow because its glass window construction reminded people of an enormous fish tank. According to Suvorov about 98% of the “diplomats” at any Soviet embassy, consulate or legation were intelligence operatives. Mostly GRU, but about 5% KGB as well. So as things probably haven’t changed that much even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this begs the question of why kick out all these Russian diplomats for spying now, when you already know who they are and what they are doing and will have less trouble keeping track of their activities? Just political theater?
(Glavnoye razvedyvatel'noye upravleniye; IPA: [ˈglavnəjə rɐzˈvʲɛdɨvətʲɪlʲnəjə ʊprɐˈvlʲenʲɪjə]), abbreviated GRU (Russian: ГРУ; IPA: [geeˈru]), is the foreign military intelligence main agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (formerly the Soviet Army General Staff of the Soviet Union). The official full name is Main Intelligence Agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (Russian: Гла́вное разве́дывательное управле́ние Генера́льного шта́ба Вооружённых Сил Росси́йской Федера́ции). (Wikipedia).
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB; Russian: Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации (ФСБ), tr. Federal'naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii; IPA: [fʲɪdʲɪˈralʲnəjə ˈsluʐbə bʲɪzɐˈpasnəstʲɪ rɐˈsʲijskəj fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjɪ]) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the USSR's Committee of State Security (KGB). Its main responsibilities are within the country and include counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and surveillance as well as investigating some other types of grave crimes and federal law violations. It is headquartered in Lubyanka Square, Moscow's centre, in the main building of the former KGB. The Director of the FSB since 2008 is army general Aleksandr Bortnikov. (Wikipedia).
