While the Anna Chapman story was the spy drama grabbing headlines this summer, a far more intriguing Russian espionage mystery has gone largely unreported in the international press.On August 28, a short obituary in the Defence Ministry’s official newspaper, Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star, carried the terse news that General Yury Ivanov, a deputy head of the foreign intelligence department (GRU), had died.
There were no details, merely a note about his “tragic death”.
The same day, RIA Novosti cited a military source as saying that Ivanov died “several days ago while swimming”.
The plot thickened, however, with revelations in the Turkish and Syrian press that Ivanov, a veteran of military operations in the North Caucasus, had disappeared some weeks previously, after swimming on a beach in Syria. His decomposing body had then washed up on a beach in neighbouring Turkey.
A month later, political and military experts say the basic facts about his death still don’t add up, and they find it hard to believe that someone of Ivanov’s importance in the top echelons of Russian intelligence could have gone swimming unattended, drowned, and his body gone missing for nearly two weeks.
The scanty information about the death of such a highly-placed military official has led to speculation that there could be a cover-up underway.
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 22 September 2010 01:24 (thirteen years ago) link