The European Union has imposed sanctions on officers of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) Unit 29155, a secret Russian unit.
The EU has added three Russian officers to the sanctions list for malicious cyber activity against Estonia. The cyber attacks on Estonia occurred in 2020. The attacks provided hackers with unauthorized access to classified information and confidential data in several government ministries, leading to the theft of thousands of documents.
These officers of Unit 29155 have been added to the EU sanctions list:
- Nikolai Alexandrovich Korchagin (born 16 September 1997),
- Vitaly Shevchenko (born 9 August 1987)
- Yuriy Fedorovich Denisov (born June 17, 1960).
In 2019, the New York Times reported that secret unit 29155 was responsible for a series of operations in various European countries that were carried out as part of a coordinated and ongoing campaign to destabilize Europe. According to the NYT, special forces were involved in a destabilization campaign in Moldova, poisoning Bulgarian businessman Emilian Gebrev, attempted coup in Montenegro, and poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, UK.
According to official data, unit 29155 is located in Moscow’s Izmailovo district:
