Dossier Center: Drunk crashes, graveyard stashes, and gun dealers
What did the GRU spy do in Central Europe?
Translation of Dossier Center investigation:
Imagine a Russian spy in Europe undercover. Before your eyes appears the image of a silent Stirlitz in a stylish coat or a deeply conspiratorial "illegal," as in the TV series "The Americans." Now compare these images with our hero, GRU Colonel Anton Goryev. His last cover is the post of Russian consul in Slovakia, where he is known for a tragic accident.
In the summer of 2021, our spy, while driving a diplomatic car, hit a 51-year-old woman in a supermarket parking lot. She was admitted to the hospital with severe injuries. This was not a secret operation to eliminate the "enemy of the motherland" - Goryev was simply drunk. The GRU colonel refused to take a blood alcohol test and left the scene but sobered up the next day and apologized to the victim's family. He did not suffer punishment for drunk driving: he held diplomatic immunity.
Six months later, Anton Goryev was among dozens of Russian diplomats expelled from Slovakia. What exactly he did in the country is unknown. But a lot was found out about his adventures in Hungary, where he previously headed the consular department of the embassy. Goryev arranged spy caches in Hungarian cemeteries, opened a monument to Yuri Gagarin together with a local extremist, saved arms dealers from extradition to the United States, and organized a Night Wolves rally. Together with partners from VSquare (Central Europe) and ICJK (Slovakia), the Dossier Center tells about the rich life of a Russian spy in Central Europe.
Sakhalin — Budapest
Anton Gennadyevich Goryev was born in the Saratov region in 1983. In the early 2000s, he joined the Russian army, and at the age of 24, the future spy became a squad leader in the Russian military unit 49555 in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. The 2357th separate battalion of radio direction finding of the GRU is located there. Goryev was registered in those days right next door - on Gvardeyskaya Street in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Goryev's wife Agnia was registered at the GRU hostel in Moscow.
From 2007 to 2013, a gap gaped in Goryev's work biography - judging by open sources, at that time he was not doing anything. It was probably then that he was chosen to train for service abroad under diplomatic cover.
“In order to become a GRU officer performing tasks abroad (legally or illegally), officers are trained at the Military Diplomatic Academy in Moscow. This academy attracts students who are in demand in all Russian armed forces,” a source in one of the European diplomatic missions told VSquare.
The GRU officers responsible for recruiting future undercover diplomats are looking for the best candidates in the military units of the GRU, he said. For example, in electronic intelligence units or in special forces.
In 2013, Goryev finally became a diplomat. In an article devoted to a photographic exhibition at the Hungarian Military Museum in Budapest, he was presented as a Russian consul. The Hungarian intelligence services knew that Goryev was working in intelligence, a former Hungarian counterintelligence officer told VSquare.
According to him, at the beginning of his espionage career, Goryev was assigned to look after the burial places of Soviet soldiers of the Second World War. This is a typical task for young GRU spies, a source of foreign journalists explained.
“Such activities involve a lot of travel outside the city, which gives GRU officers an excellent opportunity to conduct operational support work in parallel. For example, they can explore the countryside, walk through the forests in search of suitable hiding places where GRU agents can leave or receive money and information. Or - to determine safe points for meetings with these GRU agents, ”the source explained to VSquare.
Under the guise of caring for military graves, Goryev visited many public cemeteries, the former counterintelligence officer added in a conversation with VSquare. Walking through the graveyards, GRU officers not only lay wreaths for Soviet soldiers but also look for abandoned graves. Untidy burials are a sure sign that the relatives of the deceased also died. This means that their names can be used to create fake documents - they are used in espionage operations.
The best friends of the GRU are the radicals
The tour of Soviet memorials helped Anton Goryev establish contacts with local pro-Kremlin radical cells - from communists to far right, etc.
In Hungary, as in most countries of the Eastern Bloc, many see the Soviet past as an occupation. And those who sympathize with the Kremlin are nostalgic for the Soviet Union and most often belong to radical groups. They celebrate the day the Red Army entered the country and lay wreaths at Soviet memorials. Such fringe activists are prime candidates for the role of GRU agents. According to a VSquare source from one of the ultra-left organizations, Goryev was friends with several of his associates.
In 2015, Hungarian communist and far-right organizations formed an unlikely alliance to hold an anti-Ukrainian conference in Budapest. GRU officer Anton Goryev was among the participants. At the conference, the activists demanded that Crimea, the “DPR, and LPR” be granted the right to “self-determination” and supported the pro-Kremlin course of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The activists "proposed to raise the Hungarian government's 'pivot to the East' policy to the European level, revisit the hostile attitude of NATO and the EU towards the East, and create a system of equal cooperation with Russia."
Around this period, our spy received a promotion - he became the second secretary and head of the consular department of the Russian Embassy. Soon Anton Goryev organized a rally of "Night Wolves" in Hungary - of course, again at the cemetery. Together with pro-Putin bikers, he laid wreaths at the memorial to Soviet soldiers in Budapest. A few months earlier, Vladimir Putin participated in the opening of the memorial.
A year later, the GRU colonel appeared in public along with the deputy chairman of the far-right pro-Kremlin Jobbik party, László Toroczkai. They held a ceremony to unveil a monument to Yuri Gagarin in the village of Asottalom, where Toroczkai was mayor.
In Hungary, Toroczkai is considered an extremist: his youth movement Sixty-Four Districts (HVIM) recruited ultra-radicals from outside the country. The group organized rallies in support of “the DPR” and called for a boycott of the Roshen chocolate company of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. They also deny that Transcarpathia belongs to Ukraine.
In response to VSquare, Toroczkai denied knowing Anton Goryev or that a Russian diplomat played any role in organizing a celebration in honor of Yuri Gagarin many years ago. According to him, he sent a general invitation to the Russian embassy for the event, and they sent Goryev.
In addition to contacts with radical activists and caring for Soviet memorials, Goryev defended arms dealers. In November 2016, Hungarian authorities raided an arms depot near Budapest and detained Russian arms suppliers Vladimir Lyubishin Sr. and his son Vladimir Lyubishin Jr. The international investigation was led by undercover US DEA agents posing as members of a Mexican drug cartel. The Lyubishins agreed to sell the cartel old Soviet weapons decommissioned by the Hungarian army in exchange for cocaine and several million dollars.
The consular department of Goryev saved the arms dealers: its employees regularly visited the Lyubishins in prison and were present at all court hearings. In the end, FSB staged its own investigation and asked to send the Russians home. The Hungarian government handed over the Russians to the Kremlin, thanks to which they avoided extradition to the States. In Russia, all charges were dropped from the Lyubishins.
What Goryev did in subsequent years in Hungary is unknown, but in the 2020s our spy was already working in Slovakia. According to VSquare, Goryev appeared on the list of accredited diplomats of the Slovak Foreign Ministry in January 2020.
The only public mention of his activities in the new country is the news about the very incident when a drunken spy hit a woman. Goryev did not have time to mark himself with anything else: in the spring of 2022, he was expelled from Slovakia after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
According to VSquare, two batches of Russian diplomats were expelled from Slovakia in 2022. In mid-March, Slovak authorities uncovered a Russian spy ring run by members of the Russian embassy in Bratislava. The police have filed charges against Pavel Bučka, a retired member of the Slovak Ministry of Defense. He admitted that since 2013 he had been providing classified information to Russian spies, leaving SD cards in hiding places, and meeting with curators in deserted places.
The second round took place at the end of March, when Slovakia expelled 35 diplomats, halving the number of Russian embassy staff. According to an ICJK source, Goryev and his wife most likely went home with the second group.
“As for the Russian embassies, almost 100%, literally every employee in Slovakia, is an intelligence operative under diplomatic cover,” said then-Defense Minister Yaroslav Nagy.
The fact that, after Hungary, Goryev was sent to work in neighboring Slovakia may mean that his operations could take place in both countries at the same time, Ferenc Katrein, a former employee of the Hungarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution (AH), explained to VSquare:
“Such cross-border activities of Russian spies are commonplace. They may not even participate in operations in the country where they are accredited [as diplomats]. The best spies are often deployed in third countries.”