Last time we told you about GRU officer Sergei Parubin who is currently working in Belgrade, alongside Georgiy Kleban. We’ve been looking closely at Parubin and he seems particularly interesting to us. According to what we’ve been able to find, it seems that Parubin has a long history in the Balkan region not just Belgrade, previously serving in Zagreb, Croatia up to 2015. This isn’t even his first time in Belgrade, he was previously there in the early 2000s up to 2009. The GRU seem to rotate their military attaches and assistants throughout Russian embassies across the Balkan capitals, keeping them in the area for years. This is not normal behavior in other parts of Europe but seems to be here.
So what? Who cares? Why does that matter?
It’s probably much easier for GRU officers to stay in the same region for a long time, especially somewhere like the Balkans where people cross over into a neighboring country all the time to see family and friends. If you were for example a GRU officer, named Sergei Parubin, then you would be able to move around between countries easily with the perfect excuse of visiting some “friends” and if those friends just happened to be people you were paying to give you secret information…even better! It also means you don’t have to pass your agents off to someone new which is probably quite hard to do. New people might make mistakes and then get caught and all your hard work would go to waste or your agent might not get on with someone new… what happens if they bring the wrong type of Vodka? Not a problem for the GRU! They have been able to keep people like Parubin in the region for so long, they don’t need to take any extra risk and can carry on with whatever they’re up to as if nothing had changed!
And this is exactly what is being shown in the recent video that was leaked involving Parubin’s colleague Kleban. A GRU Officer with his Balkan friend… exchanging data for money (and the obligatory bottle of Vodka). Even more worrying is the fact that it is being done so casually. So openly. There are no dark alleyways or hidden meeting areas. No secret spy-like meeting point in the corner of a park or behind an abandoned building. It’s just two guys brazenly, though somewhat hurriedly, exchanging their goods at a bar over a nice beer. Well, we assume it’s a nice beer… and we assume it was a nice bottle of vodka!
As the latest spy game shows, the GRU don’t always slip under the radar though. Earlier this month a GRU officer, Vladimir Rusyaev, was declared a “Persona Non Grata” (PNG) in Bulgaria and expelled from the country for running a network of spies! https://www.icrazemagazine.com/news/nato-ally-expels-undercover-russian-spy/69631/
Numbers at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade are constantly on the rise. It is the largest in the region and more and more of this number are made up of intelligence officers. More officers like Kleban’s friend Sergei Parubin. What exactly is this guy’s role in everything? We’ll be investigating him further… and we invite you to do the same.
So…what is going on in Serbia?
Understandably the reaction in Serbia has been one of alarm. President Vucic said in a press conference after a National Security Council that some actions will be taken against foreign intelligence services that would be publicly visible.
We look forward to seeing the results of this action and wonder whether Sergei Parubin will be affected by these actions. If he does leave Serbia, it will be interesting to see whether he eventually reappears in another Balkan country… meaning he won’t really have left Serbia at all.
The question remains as to the motives of the GRU’s increased activities in Belgrade. President Vucic said that his only question for President Putin was “Why?” and we have the very same question. Is this part of an increasing malign campaign by the Russian government in the Balkans? Or are we looking at the early stages of another coup attempt? We’re looking for the answers and we will be back soon.
