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News
Beyond the Pale
Last week the “Sydney Morning Herald” featured a story which appeared recently in the London “Telegraph” on the now-deceased MI6 double agent, Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky. He was a KGB colonel who provided critical information to British Intelligence for nearly a dozen years from 1974. In 1985 MI6 exfiltrated him from the USSR - relocating him to the UK.
Gordievsky’s story, however, does not end in the mid-1980s. According to media reports, he lived a productive and fulfilling life, as a popular community figure and UK celebrity – involving himself in a variety of activities, writing books and other treatises and occasionally meeting with Western Heads of State, including then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and senior “Five – Eyes” intelligence officers.
In October 2007 Gordievsky was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to UK security. But by that year the defector’s overt lifestyle in Surrey, England had hit a brick wall. Vladimir Putin was by then well in control of Russia and relations between the West and Russia were beginning to fracture. A few months earlier, in November 2006, Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service who had been a prominent Putin critic was poisoned in London.
In November 2007 Gordievsky was himself the target of a KGB assassination operation – poisoned with thallium by a former Russian military officer who had befriended him. After being in a coma and hospitalised for a fortnight, Gordievsky managed to recover, albeit with permanent loss of feeling in his fingers. Understandably spooked as a consequence, he essentially went to ground. He died in relative social isolation in Surrey in March 2025.
In around 2008, Putin created a special ‘de-stabilisation’ unit of embattled Russian war veterans attached to his Military Intelligence apparatus – the GRU. Known as Unit 29155, this entity appeared initially to be involved in sabotage operations within Europe. By 2018, however, the Unit had been linked to the attempted Novichok poisoning in London of former Russian double agent and defector, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter, Yulia.
As Unit 29155 began to emerge from its clandestine depths post 2018, so the world began to see it develop into a global destabilisation network - broadening its remit to encompass cyber-security attacks and probably also disinformation campaigns, in addition to its ‘standard fare’ of sabotage and assassination operations.
By the early 2020s, with Crimea now retaken, Ukraine was squarely on Putin’s radar. He could see himself featuring in the annuls of world history as the great global leader who single-handedly re-created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Only Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy stood in his way. And the gormless Zelenskyy was no match, surely, for the wily former KGB intelligence officer Putin.
No so. As we make our way carefully through the mid-2020s, we see that Ukraine has become, increasingly, a thorn in Putin’s imperialistic side; one which has grown beyond Europe, to the furthest of far-flung places in our Globe. Australia included. Consequently, it seems the once European-centric focus of Putin’s Unit 25199 has now broadened and there is enough evidence to suggest it has become actively involved in destabilisation activities in those countries around the world which are supporting Ukraine. And that includes Australia.
A few years ago, an attempt was made on the life of a former Australian counter-intelligence officer who had been actively involved in neutralising a number of key Russian intelligence initiatives in recent decades, both in Australia and globally. Putin, one suspects, was out to get him and it is believed that two operatives, most likely from Unit 29155, were instructed to assassinate him. They jumped the Australian in a dark street in one of our major cities, leaving him with serious head injuries – lying unconscious in a pool of blood. But for the quick actions of two elderly passers-by who nurtured him and quickly got him to a hospital, he would not be alive to tell the tale. Yet the full tale of this assassination attempt in Australia, I suggest, will never be told publicly and life will go on as normal – beyond the pale.
Sadly, this anecdote is not an anecdote. It belongs to today’s world and is the reason why our intelligence agencies in particular need to be better than just good or passable. Putin and the like are not going to go away. Nor should we.
Gordievsky’s story, however, does not end in the mid-1980s. According to media reports, he lived a productive and fulfilling life, as a popular community figure and UK celebrity – involving himself in a variety of activities, writing books and other treatises and occasionally meeting with Western Heads of State, including then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and senior “Five – Eyes” intelligence officers.
In October 2007 Gordievsky was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to UK security. But by that year the defector’s overt lifestyle in Surrey, England had hit a brick wall. Vladimir Putin was by then well in control of Russia and relations between the West and Russia were beginning to fracture. A few months earlier, in November 2006, Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service who had been a prominent Putin critic was poisoned in London.
In November 2007 Gordievsky was himself the target of a KGB assassination operation – poisoned with thallium by a former Russian military officer who had befriended him. After being in a coma and hospitalised for a fortnight, Gordievsky managed to recover, albeit with permanent loss of feeling in his fingers. Understandably spooked as a consequence, he essentially went to ground. He died in relative social isolation in Surrey in March 2025.
In around 2008, Putin created a special ‘de-stabilisation’ unit of embattled Russian war veterans attached to his Military Intelligence apparatus – the GRU. Known as Unit 29155, this entity appeared initially to be involved in sabotage operations within Europe. By 2018, however, the Unit had been linked to the attempted Novichok poisoning in London of former Russian double agent and defector, Sergei Skripal, along with his daughter, Yulia.
As Unit 29155 began to emerge from its clandestine depths post 2018, so the world began to see it develop into a global destabilisation network - broadening its remit to encompass cyber-security attacks and probably also disinformation campaigns, in addition to its ‘standard fare’ of sabotage and assassination operations.
By the early 2020s, with Crimea now retaken, Ukraine was squarely on Putin’s radar. He could see himself featuring in the annuls of world history as the great global leader who single-handedly re-created the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Only Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy stood in his way. And the gormless Zelenskyy was no match, surely, for the wily former KGB intelligence officer Putin.
No so. As we make our way carefully through the mid-2020s, we see that Ukraine has become, increasingly, a thorn in Putin’s imperialistic side; one which has grown beyond Europe, to the furthest of far-flung places in our Globe. Australia included. Consequently, it seems the once European-centric focus of Putin’s Unit 25199 has now broadened and there is enough evidence to suggest it has become actively involved in destabilisation activities in those countries around the world which are supporting Ukraine. And that includes Australia.
A few years ago, an attempt was made on the life of a former Australian counter-intelligence officer who had been actively involved in neutralising a number of key Russian intelligence initiatives in recent decades, both in Australia and globally. Putin, one suspects, was out to get him and it is believed that two operatives, most likely from Unit 29155, were instructed to assassinate him. They jumped the Australian in a dark street in one of our major cities, leaving him with serious head injuries – lying unconscious in a pool of blood. But for the quick actions of two elderly passers-by who nurtured him and quickly got him to a hospital, he would not be alive to tell the tale. Yet the full tale of this assassination attempt in Australia, I suggest, will never be told publicly and life will go on as normal – beyond the pale.
Sadly, this anecdote is not an anecdote. It belongs to today’s world and is the reason why our intelligence agencies in particular need to be better than just good or passable. Putin and the like are not going to go away. Nor should we.
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