Exposing Russia’s Ruthless GRU: Bombing Civilians and Poisoning Spies While Europe Falters

As Russia continues its brutal assault on Ukraine, the UK has taken decisive action by sanctioning 18 officers of the Russian military intelligence agency—the GRU—implicated in one of the most heinous war crimes of recent memory: the bombing of a Mariupol theater sheltering hundreds of civilians, many of them children. This attack, carried out on March 16, 2022, was not random but a calculated operation supported by prior cyber reconnaissance conducted by Unit 26165. The chilling detail that civilians had painstakingly painted “children” outside the theater to protect themselves exposes the cold-hearted nature of Putin’s regime and its disregard for...