Round-trip of analysts on the Biot-Russia case
The Biot-Russia case: the words of Minister Guerini in Parliament and the comments of analysts
The spy story involving Navy officer Walter Biot and two Russian soldiers ends up in front of the Defense Commission of the House and Senate. Defense Minister Lorenzo Guerini , reporting to Parliament, said that the frigate officer held a position that authorized him to view classified documents but his duties "did not include command or direction activities, they carried him to have access to assessment documents and policies and not to the management of operations or the details of national and Alliance capabilities " . The holder of the Ministry of Defense thus reassures us with respect to the safeguarding of the most sensitive information in our country. The minister recalled that the investigation is still in force on the matter: "As long as the prosecutor does not allow us to access the documents, we will not be able to view the documents being exchanged and fully assess the extent of the information contained in the key".
Biot case: facts and analyzes
The "crime" has the appearance of a trivial exchange between information and money. Walter Biot, on duty at the Military Policy office of the Defense Staff , met a Russian soldier in a parking lot on the Roman outskirts of Spinaceto and handed over 181 classified documents , therefore protected, in exchange for 5 thousand euros. The documents were recorded on a Kingston SD Hc Micro Card hidden in the leaflet of Crestor, a cholesterol drug. The documents were photographed with his Samsung S9, among these nine are classified as "highly confidential" and of a military nature while another 47 read the words "Nato secret". The documents to be exchanged relate to military telecommunication systems. “They can understand the procedures with which we move, we and NATO, the rules for activating the Alliance – said the analyst and president of Cesi, Andrea Mergelletti -. And when you have the procedures you have it all. Biot did not reveal any secrets, he killed the Italian soldiers on a mission . He is a traitor, not a mole ”.
The spying story of today is closely linked to the worsening of the international context, which pushes Italy to a more careful surveillance and the Russians to seek useful information to anticipate the choices of the West
– Germano Dottori (@GermanoDottori) March 31, 2021
The analysis by Margelletti (Cesi) and Fittipaldi (Domani)
The military prosecutor and the magistrates of piazzale Clodio have opened two separate files. Against the Italian soldier, currently detained, the charges are: procurement of news concerning the security of the State , political and military espionage, dissemination of news whose disclosure is prohibited. What he risks is disproportionate to the laughable sum obtained in exchange for the information. As written by the deputy director of the newspaper Domani , Emiliano Fittipaldi , the Aisi investigators who conducted the investigations are sure that Biot had been hooked by Dmitrij Ostroukhov a long time ago. The Italian military would have been reassured by the Gru, the Russian military secret service, who the betrayal would have been consummated without excessive risk. “The Ros were very good – continues Mergelletti -. The Russians underestimated our preparation . They moved with ruthlessness in England but here they were caught immediately ”.
Mark Galeotti: "I expect a reaction from Russia"
Minister Di Maio called to confer the Russian ambassador Serey Razov and notified the immediate expulsion of the two Russian officials involved in this affair: Alexey Nemudrov , naval and aeronautical attaché of the Russian embassy in Rome, and Dmitri Ostroukhov employed in the same office. Professor Mark Galeotti , director of Mayak Intelligence and senior associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute, is confident of a rapid Russian reaction. "I have no doubt that there will be at least one expulsion – he told Formiche.net -. This will inevitably cause tensions with Italy, but in a sense Moscow is trapped by its own past rhetoric and practice. Moscow always takes revenge on publicized western expulsions , and we have already seen nationalists in the Duma ask for reciprocal action "
Dario Fabbri: "The government wanted to flaunt its loyalty to the US"
The judgment of Dario Fabbri , Limes analyst, on the matter is very cautious. “It is impossible to establish the veracity of the accusations against the officer of the Navy Biot, it is more relevant to judge what this signals – writes Fabbri -. Cases of informers "sold" within the intelligence of each country are very common, but rarely become public ". Fabbri, therefore, as a connoisseur of the intricate network of foreign policy, is inclined towards the “internal track”. “When a state unmasks a mole inside it tends to keep it hidden at all costs, so as not to expose its flaws, rather by responding to the offensive on the same ground – continues Fabbri -. Conversely, when he announces what has happened, he pursues specific objectives . In the case of Biot, the Italian government wanted to magnify the incident to signal our newfound loyalty to the US administration , now that Biden claims to reunite the European front on a moralistic basis with an anti-Chinese and anti-Russian function ”. The member of the scientific committee of Limes sees in this story the desire of our country to get even closer to Washington by allowing itself to take a little trip to Moscow. “Of all the actors, Moscow is the least popular : it knows the dynamics of events like this well and has a lot of affinity with our country – continues Fabbri -. Thus the flaunting of the meager 5 thousand euros that Biot would have received communicates the more or less secondary nature of the information that it would have disseminated, with the aim of keeping the "scandal" in an easily recoverable bed ”.
Maurizio Vezzosi: "Biot case aimed at removing Rome from Moscow"
Surprised by what appears to be an amateur maneuver Maurizio Vezzosi , analyst for RSI Swiss Television and Treccani's Geopolitical Atlas, is said to be surprised by the almost amateurish outlines of the story . “I do not think, to tell the truth, that it is surprising to discover that even in Italy men of the Russian apparatus collect information, and sometimes do it even with scarcely legal means – says Vezzosi when asked by Ansa -. What is surprising, according to what we learn from the press, is the amateurism with which in this case certain information would have been recovered : anything is possible, of course, but I believe that at least for the moment it is reasonable to have reservations about this version ". The geopolitical analyst believes the hypothesis of a higher game, in which Biot and the Russian military are nothing more than pawns, is more likely. “More likely, it is that in Moscow, and beyond, someone wanted to sabotage the attempts to approach the West by favoring the construction of this casus belli – adds Vezzosi -. If this were the case, the reasons for the affair could in part be traced to the internal conflicts in Russian power. To this we can certainly add that both the United States and Great Britain were only waiting for a “casus belli” to try to further distance Moscow from Rome ”.
Biot case: the choice of the Atlanticist camp
The arrest of Biot and the expulsion of the two Russians would go far beyond the fact itself. The Italian government would have liked to give “a clear, definitive message on the country's choice of field – writes Emiliano Fittipaldi in“ Domani ”-. Mario Draghi, our internal services led by Mario Parente, the head of the delegated authority Franco GabrieIli who is the prime minister's privileged adviser, are all convinced Atlanticists ”. During the last two governments the Atlanticist position of Italy has been less decisive than in the past. The agreement on the Silk Road, the involvement of some men of Matteo Salvini's entourage in the Russian gas affair, the "Barr" affair and the secret visits to Rome (in the presence of Conte and his representatives of Dis) of the former Minister of Justice very close to Donald Trump , have cracked relations with Washington. "By arresting the spy who was selling secrets to GRU agents, summoning Putin's ambassador and expelling in a few hours the two military attachés, the Draghi government and the apparatus wanted to highlight that Italy has straightened the rudder, and that any recent hesitation has been overcome – concluded Fittipaldi -. A choice of field also facilitated by the victory of] oe Biden and the new one an American administration that began its mandate by defining P utn "a killer" and arguing with Beijing with very little diplomatic tones ".
Mauro Obinu: "Russia's information needs are the same as in the Cold War"
According to retired Carabinieri colonel Mauro Obinu, on the front line in the last years of the Cold War , Russia's information needs would not have changed at all after the fall of the wall. “We have to underline three points. The first is that the operational posture of the Russians has not changed over the decades – said the former deputy commander of the ROS heard by Formiche.net -. Russia's information needs from a politico-military point of view are the same as those of the Soviet Union: to obtain information on NATO and the European Union. Just like it happened in the last phase of the Cold War ”. Italy is at the center of these collaborative networks in which very interesting information for Russian espionage is circulating. What has happened in recent days in the political-military field is also happening to the civilian world. The colonel, with a past in the Sisde and Aisi , adds that the attention of intelligence and the protection of sensitive data should also shift to the industrial fabric. “ There are strategic companies and small and medium-sized enterprises of national interest that are the object of intelligence and hostile activities from various entities. In this sense, the strengthening of the cyber perimeter is great news – says Obinu -. But there is still a lack of training on counter-intelligence in business and production : in the civilian world it is necessary to become aware of the penetrability of the context through the cyber environment but also the insider threats and human espionage ".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/girotondo-di-analisti-sul-caso-biot-russia/ on Sun, 11 Apr 2021 07:55:53 +0000.