Known as the Department of Special Tasks (SSD), is based in the headquarters of Russian military intelligence, a vast glass-and-steel complex on the outskirts of Moscow known as the Aquarium. Its operations have included assassination attempts, sabotage, and a plot to plant incendiary devices on airplanes.
The creation of the department reflects Moscow’s war posture against the West. It was established in 2023 in response to Western support for Ukraine and includes veterans of some of Russia’s most reckless black ops in recent years.
"Russia believes it is in conflict with what it calls 'the collective West,' and is acting accordingly, to the point of threatening us with a nuclear attack and a build-up of its armed forces.", said James Appathurai, NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General, responsible for hybrid warfare.
The new department, known to Western intelligence officials by its Russian acronym SSD, is believed to be behind a series of recent attacks against the West, including an attempt to kill the CEO of a German arms manufacturer and a plot to plant incendiary devices on planes used by shipping giant DHL.
The SSD brought together various elements of Russia’s intelligence services. It seized some powers from the FSB, the country’s largest intelligence service, and absorbed Unit 29155, which Western intelligence and law enforcement officials say was behind the 2018 poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.
The SSD has at least three general tasks, according to Western intelligence officials: carrying out assassinations and sabotage abroad, infiltrating Western companies and universities, and recruiting and training foreign agents. The department has sought to recruit agents from Ukraine, developing countries, and countries considered friendly to Russia, such as Serbia. The department also operates an elite special operations center, known as Senezh, where Russia trains some of its special forces.
Two men — Colonel General Andrey Vladimirovich Averyanov (pictured left) and his deputy, Lieutenant General Ivan Sergeevich Kasianenko (pictured right) — supervise the SSD’s operations. Averyanov, a veteran of Russia’s Chechen wars, is wanted by Czech police for his suspected role in an operation to blow up an ammunition depot in 2014, an attack that killed two people. President Vladimir Putin awarded him Russia’s highest honor, the Hero of Russia medal, following his involvement in the occupation and annexation of Crimea.
Western intelligence officials said they believed his deputy, Kasianenko, coordinated the operation to poison Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the United Kingdom. Both survived the poisoning but were seriously injured. A third woman died after picking up a poison-contaminated perfume bottle that the attackers had discarded.
Kasianenko's role includes overseeing covert operations in Europe and taking over Wagner's paramilitary operations in Africa after the assassination of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in 2023.
Kasianenko was born in 1975 in Kazakhstan, then part of the Soviet Union. Known internally by his initials KIS, he joined the Russian military intelligence, known as the GRU, after serving in the Russian Air Force.
Kasianenko, a native Persian speaker who once worked in Tehran under the guise of a diplomatic post, has recently been implicated in facilitating a transfer of expertise and technology from Russia to Iran, according to European intelligence officials. Tehran is supplying drones and missiles for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
In December, the European Union sanctioned a unit of the department, without identifying SSD by name, for orchestrating “coups, assassinations, bombings and cyberattacks” in Europe and elsewhere. The United States indicted SSD members on similar charges in December. The State Department is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information on five members accused of cyberattacks on Ukraine.
SSD hostile activity peaked last summer but has recently subsided, according to U.S. and European officials. The pause in activity may be aimed at creating diplomatic space for Moscow to negotiate with the new U.S. administration.
In May, Ukraine's security service said it had foiled a Russian plot to burn down several supermarkets and a cafe. Ukraine said the plan was coordinated by Major Yuri Sizov.
Western intelligence officials said Sizov, an officer with Senezh, now part of the SSD, coordinated another operation days later to torch a shopping mall in the Polish capital of Warsaw. He has since been sanctioned by the EU for his role in the plots.
Then, in July, similar incendiary devices sent via DHL went off at transit centers in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England. “If one of the devices had ignited during a flight, it could have brought down the plane,” the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Thomas Haldenwang, told the German parliament in October. It wasn’t just that a connecting flight was delayed, and the device went off while at the airport, he said.
Security officials said the incendiary devices that ignited in July appeared to be part of a test of placing similar devices on planes bound for North America. Alerts were sent in August to major shipping companies, airlines and airports, and some of them have stepped up security checks, according to officials and industry representatives familiar with the procedures.
The threat was assessed so high that then-National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Central Intelligence Agency chief William Burns called Moscow directly in August, demanding that it halt the attack. The calls were first reported by The New York Times.
SSD operates under Putin's directives, but commanders may not seek approval for specific operations, Western officials said.
The department has focused in particular on Germany because Russia sees the country as a weak link in NATO, given its dependence on Russian energy, growing anxiety about nuclear escalation and sympathy for Russia among some politicians and voters, according to European and U.S. intelligence officials.
In May last year, SSD agents set fire to a factory in Berlin owned by Diehl, a company that supplies weapons systems to Ukraine.
Around the same time, U.S. intelligence told Germany it had uncovered a plan to assassinate leaders of the European arms industry, including Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, Ukraine's largest supplier of artillery ammunition and which is also building a tank factory in the war-torn country.
Attacks have also occurred elsewhere in Europe. In June, French authorities arrested a man after an improvised bomb exploded in his hotel room. French authorities charged the Russian with terrorism, saying he had planned to target a home goods store.
Some security officials have called on the West to step up efforts in response to Russia's operations.
The United States should strengthen and leverage its clandestine activities, including in and around Russia, to deter further aggression by the Kremlin, said Nick Thompson, a former CIA official.
This was echoed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said at a recent hearing that the CIA "must become bolder and more innovative in covert actions".
James Appathurai warned that the United States and its allies should adopt a war mentality in response "throughout society". Failure to do so in the face of growing Russian aggression would be dangerous, he said.
