Russia and Ukraine

[Anomalocaris]

It has been suggested that assassination may be an GRU initiative.    The GRU is Russian defense ministry’s intelligence arm.    GRU’s scope of responsibilities are broader than typical military intelligence arms around the world, and include operational control over many of Russia’s special forces and chemical warfare units,  and more critically, control of ground and air defenses for critical areas inside Russia, including air defense missile units around Moscow.     GRU has been responsible for many of the assassinations often attributed in the west to the KGB, and the GRU is believed to be responsible for the recent nerve gas assassination attempts against Russian dissident and defectors in the UK and Germany.    GRU is often regarded as more powerful than the KGB/FSB both in the Soviet era and particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union.    The Russian servicemen killed by prigozhin’s men during the coup is said to be from the GRU, not regular Russian military units.

It has also been pointed out that Putin has made it a point to always keep promises he had explicitly made, and that at the end of the coup he had made the promise to protect Prigozhin provided Progizhin lived up to certain conditions.    If in fact the assassination was an independent initiative by the GRU, it would suggest the GRU is in the ascendant in Russia and the former KGB colonel’s control over Russia is circumscribed.