Moscow
\nThe head of the Russian military intelligence agency linked to a series of notorious operations abroad has died after a long illness, the defence ministry said on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Igor Korobov, 62, had headed the military\u2019s Main Intelligence Directorate since 2016 and was the target of US sanctions.<\/p>\n
He died on Wednesday from a \u201clong and serious illness,\u201d the ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe dear memory of this great man, a faithful Russian son and a patriot of the Motherland… will remain forever in our hearts,\u201d the ministry said.<\/p>\n
His successor has yet to be announced.<\/p>\n
The West has accused the powerful agency of a number of attacks on foreign soil including the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent in Britain last March.<\/p>\n
Washington has said the GRU was directly involved in interfering in the 2016 US election through \u201ccyber-enabled activities\u201d and the Treasury Department included Korobov on a sanctions list.<\/p>\n
Korobov did not participate in a gala marking the centenary of the service in early November when Russian President Vladimir Putin heaped praise on the GRU.<\/p>\n
Korobov\u2019s first deputy Igor Kostyukov reportedly presided over the ceremony.<\/p>\n
Korobov, who joined military intelligence in 1985, was made a Hero of Russia for his service.<\/p>\n
His predecessor, Igor Sergun, died unexpectedly in early January 2016.<\/p>\n
The GRU is one of Moscow\u2019s three spy agencies, along with the SVR foreign intelligence agency and the FSB security service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Moscow The head of the Russian military intelligence agency linked to a series of notorious operations abroad has died after a long illness, the defence ministry said on Thursday. Igor Korobov, 62, had headed the military\u2019s Main Intelligence Directorate since 2016 and was the target of US sanctions. He died on Wednesday from a \u201clong […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48003,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48002"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48004,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48002\/revisions\/48004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}