Embassy in Slovakia Embassy ● Roster captured ● host list

On June 21st VSquare published this article starting by stating that “in June 2021 in a Bratislava supermarket parking lot, a spy working for Russia’s military intelligence, the GRU, hit a Slovak woman with his car. The 51-year-old woman was taken to hospital with serious injuries. However, unlike some other incidents in previous years, this was far from an elaborate assassination attempt from the Russian spy agency, which is known for its deadly attacks on European soil. But this undercover GRU agent, a round-faced, short-haired man in his late 30s posing as a diplomat at the Russian Embassy in Bratislava, was in fact simply driving drunk. The man was driving his Volkswagen uncontrollably in the parking lot and on the sidewalk, and he hit the woman in said parking lot while she was loading her groceries, according to Slovak media reports on the incident. In the beginning, Slovak police did not reveal the man’s identity, only stating that they couldn’t prosecute him in accordance with the Vienna Convention. Later, however, media reports identified the diplomat as Anton Goriev, also revealing that he refused a breathalyzer test, left the scene, and apologized the next day to the family of the woman he hit. Goriev got away with drunk driving — but not with espionage. A few months later, in the spring of 2022, Anton Goriev was among the dozens of Russian diplomats officially expelled from Slovakia for espionage, VSquare and Slovak partner ICJK.sk have found based on our examination of Slovak foreign ministry documents. In March 2022, Slovakia first expelled three diplomats and detained three people. It went on to curtail the overall number of the Russian Embassy in Bratislava and sent home 35 embassy staff. It was part of a joint Western effort to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the course of a few weeks, hundreds of Russian spies working under diplomatic cover were booted out from EU and NATO countries. VSquare, as part of the #ESPIOMATS project, a collaboration of international journalists working to identify the hundreds of Russian diplomats expelled in 2022, investigated the history of Anton Goriev’s activities. We found that Goriev first worked for a GRU military unit, then spent around eight years in Budapest, likely from 2012 until 2019. A former Hungarian counterintelligence officer claimed that Goriev was known to be an “identified intelligence officer” by Viktor Orbán’s government since the Russian spy’s arrival to Budapest in the early 2010s. However, Hungarian security agencies still let Goriev network and mingle with both Hungary’s far-left and far-right radicals during his lengthy stay in Budapest. Ironically, the Russian spy, after establishing ties with a Hungarian far-right leader who harbored, among others, anti-Slovak sentiments, was then reassigned to work in Slovakia. Slovakia’s Ministry of Defense refused to comment while the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Cabinet Office and the Russian Embassy in Bratislava did not react at all to our comment requests.”

Following 2022’s week 11 story #10, on January 2nd we published this video for archival/historical purposes. As per its description, “this video was released to the press on March 15, 2022. It reportedly shows Russian military intelligence (GRU) Lieutenant Colonel Sergej Solomasov meeting with one of his local assets, Slovak journalist Bohuš Garbár, in a park located in Bratislava, Slovakia. According to local media, this video is from 2021 showing one of the very first clandestine meetings of the two, and it was recorded by Slovakia’s counter-intelligence unit of the Slovak Information Service (SIS). The GRU officer was operating in Slovakia under diplomatic cover, something known in the Russian doctrine as “legal” intelligence officer. His cover story was that he was the Deputy Military Attaché of the Russian Embassy in Bratislava, Slovakia. He was expelled from the country as Persona Non Grata (PNG) and his assets, including Bohuš G., a former vice-rector at a military academy of Slovakia, identified as Colonel Pavel Bučka, and former assistant MP Jozef Mihalčina, were criminally charged for espionage.”

On March 31st, Slovakia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from Russia’s Embassy in Bratislava. Note that on week 11 (story #10) Slovakian SIS uncovered a Russian espionage network and expelled 3 more Russian diplomats (intelligence officers under diplomatic cover) from the same embassy.

Following week 11 (story #10) with Slovakian Information Service (SIS) disrupting a Russian espionage network and expelling 3 Russian intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover from the Russian Embassy in Bratislava, on Monday Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the expulsion of 3 Slovakian diplomats as “a retaliatory measure” from Slovakia’s Embassy in Moscow. Note that the tit-for-tat expulsions with covert intelligence officers/diplomats is a common strategy in foreign policy and in the intelligence community is sometimes referred to as “PNG wars” with PNG standing for Persona Non Grata.

The Slovak Defence Minister, Jaroslav Nad confirmed that the National Criminal Agency (NAKA) received “key intelligence information, including clear evidence” for a Russian espionage network after which three Russian diplomats (covert GRU officers) were expelled from the Russian Embassy in Bratislava. The initial reports states that four Slovakian nationals were also detained and two of them face espionage charges. On Tuesday, Denník N news agency published video content from a 2021 covert surveillance operation of the Slovakian Information Service (SIS) showing the Bratislava Russian Embassy’s Military Attaché, Colonel Sergei Solomasov, paying €1000 to Slovakian journalist Bohuš Garbár to promote certain news on the “Hlavné Správy” news website based on classified information provided by Bohuš M. This person, Bohuš M., is a former SIS counter-intelligence officer who was also detained. The third detainee, is Slovakian Military Academy Colonel Pavel Bučka, arrested for providing classified information to his Russian handler since 2013. And the fourth, is former assistant MP Jozef Mihalčina. The task of Mihalčina was to “obtain classified information” related to parliament material such as budgets, policy plans, personal information, etc.