West targets Russia spies

Accuses GRU of scores of attacks

BRUSSELS — The United States and other Western nations levelled a torrent of new allegations against Moscow’s secretive GRU military spy agency on Thursday, accusing its agents of hacking anti-doping agencies, plane crash investigations and a chemical weapons probe as well as launching cyberattacks that rocked America’s 2016 election and crippled Ukraine in 2017.

The rollcall of GRU malfeasance began at midnight in Britain, when British and Australian authorities accused the Russian agency of being behind the catastrophic cyberattack that caused billions in losses to Ukraine in June 2017 and a host of other hacks, including the Democratic Party e-mail leaks and online cyber propaganda that sowed havoc before Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election.

Hours later Thursday morning, Dutch defence officials broadcast photos and a timeline of GRU agents’ botched attempt to break into the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons using Wi-Fi hacking equipment hidden in the back of a sedan. The chemical weapons watchdog was investigating a Novichok nerve agent attack on a former GRU spy, Sergei Skripal, that Britain has blamed on the Russian government. Moscow has denied the charge.

The Dutch also accused the Russian agency of trying to hack into the investigation of the 2014 downing of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine that killed all 298 people on board.

Then came the U.S. government’s turn, with the U.S. Justice Department charging seven Russian GRU intelligence officers — including the four nabbed in The Hague — of an international hacking rampage that targeted more than 250 athletes, a nuclear energy company and a Swiss chemical lab.

— DUTCH DEFENCE MINISTRY Four officers of Russia’s GRU spy agency are escorted to their flight after being expelled from the Netherlands in April.

GETTY IMAGES Hacking equipment found in a car at The Hague in the Netherlands earlier this year.