The director of the military intelligence service Russian (known as GRU), Igor Korobov, died on Wednesday, according to the Kremlin. I was 62 years old and had been named a Hero of Russia for his services to the country. The Russian Defense Ministry has reported that he suffered from “a serious illness”. Korobov ran four years ago, the spy agency, which recently was highlighted for his mistakes and that is linked to some of the most controversial attributed to Russia in recent years. As the hacking of the electoral campaign in the presidential elections of the USA in 2016, the attempted murder with a chemical agent to the former colonel of the GRU, Sergey Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the United Kingdom or the attack on the world bodies of anti-doping.
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Russia has always rejected these accusations and argues that they are part of a smear campaign western. The death of Korobov, criticized for the failures of the organization, paves the way for president Vladimir Putin’s name —without motivate him in the work of the agency— a successor to lead an institution that, according to the experts, has intensified its secret missions from the tension between Russia, the US and the EU has intensified after Russia anexionase Crimea in 2014. Up to now, and despite the criticism, the Kremlin had ruled out changes coming in the GRU.
Korobov had worked in military intelligence since 1985, where he went through different positions. In 2016, Süperbahis was appointed head of the GRU by the president Putin after the death of his predecessor, at the age of 58. Last march, it was included in the list of sanctioned by the united States for “acts by or on behalf of GRU” by the interference in the presidential elections of four years ago. USA points out that the espionage Russian military was directly involved in the cyber attacks on the election campaign of democrat Hillary Clinton, also claimed responsibility for cyber attacks on a global scale NotPetya, crippled businesses, Governments, and institutions in several countries, but which affected to a greater extent in Ukraine.
And those were just a few of the first episodes of a period complicated for Korobov. In march, all eyes turned to the GRU after the poisoning with Novichok, a nerve gas, Skripal, a former colonel of the GRU and double agent, in the English city of Salisbury. The failed attempt to end his life led to the death, however, of a woman who fell ill after handling the chemical. The case drew even more the relations between the Uk and Russia.
In September, the first minister Theresa May stated that had been identified as two Russian citizens as suspects in the attack with Novichok. And the british intelligence released images of surveillance video which showed two men, later a journalistic investigation identified as two agents of the GRU. After days of controversy, both identified appeared in an interview in the chain-RT in which they denied being spies. Assured that they were businessmen who had gone to the cathedral of Salisbury tourism. The event, the security failures and the intervention of the two men led to episodes of mofa international.
a Few weeks later and when the controversy was still hot, the Dutch authorities identified four agents of the GRU, responsible for the hacking of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Since then, several sources have commented to the Russian press that the health of Korobov had worsened. The head of the GRU was not present along with Putin last October at the celebration of the centenary of the organization, an entity with a reputation for being the agency of intelligence and most powerful secret of Russia, and that during the time of the Soviet Union was regarded as the rival of the KGB.