A mysterious incident in which one of Russia’s most powerful spies was found dead on a Turkish beach has provoked speculation that the deputy head of the country’s foreign military intelligence service was murdered.
The badly decomposed body of Major General Yuri Ivanov washed up last month on the Mediterranean shoreline and was discovered by Turkish villagers in Hatay, Turkish newspapers reported on Wednesday. Reports suggest he was quietly buried in Moscow over the weekend.
Ivanov was the second in command at Russia’s foreign military intelligence unit, the GRU. The general was deployed to review military installations in Syria amid Kremlin attempts to reassert its influence in the Middle East, reports suggested.
Ivanov’s body was found on Aug. 16, but was only identified last week. Russia’s Red Star newspaper confirmed his death on Saturday in a brief obituary. Russia’s defense ministry declined to comment further.
The Russian media, however, questioned the official version of his death — that he had died while going for a swim — and pointed out that, as a top-ranking spy, he would have been accompanied everywhere by bodyguards.
The news portal Svobodnaya Pressa also pointed out that Ivanov was the second top GRU agent to die in unexplained circumstances. Another senior agent, Yuri Gusev, was killed in 1992 in a “car accident.”
His fellow officers later established that he had been murdered, the paper said, adding: “Spies of that rank are well protected. As a rule, they don’t die by chance.”
After the body was found, Turkey’s foreign ministry approached neighboring countries for further information, with Damascus reporting that Ivanov had gone missing while on assignment in Syria. The general was last seen visiting the building site for a new Russian military base in the Syrian coastal city of Tartus, which is being expanded as a base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
After his visit, he left for a meeting with Syrian intelligence agents. He then went missing, the Turkish newspaper Vatan reported yesterday.
The Kremlin assigned Ivanov to lead its war against Chechen separatists in 2000, and he allegedly masterminded a series of assassination attacks that the Russian secret service carried out on Chechens living abroad.
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