According to the paper, Western intelligence officials do not have a clear picture of the structure of Unit 29155, nor are they able to predict where it will strike next. But they believe that it consists of a very tightly knit group of intelligence officers led by Major General Andrei V. Averyanov, a hardened veteran of Russia’s Chechen wars. The existence of the unit is so secret that even other GRU operatives are unlikely to have heard of it, said The Times. Members of the unit frequently travel to Europe to carry out sabotage and disinformation campaigns, kill targets, or conduct other forms of what some experts describe as the Kremlin’s hybrid war. They tend to travel on the cheap, in order to economize and avoid attention, said the paper.

The Times said it reached out to the Kremlin with a number of questions about Unit 29155. It received a response from Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov, who suggested that the questions be directed instead to Russia’s Defense Ministry. But the ministry did not return any messages.