Adversary Intelligence — 2026-04-05
Latvia Publishes Names of Six Russian GRU Officers and One Belarusian Intelligence Agent in Annual Report
Latvia's Military Intelligence and Security Service published its 2025 annual report identifying six GRU officers: Major Alexei Pyzhikov, Captains Alexei Lesnikov and Nikolai Chetverikov, Lt. Col. Alexander Yushin, Col. Alexander Gladkov, and Grigory Ivanov. The report also named Belarusian intelligence officer Sergei Baranov. Several worked as military attachés at the Russian embassy before February 2022 and were expelled after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Ivanov had overseen intelligence collection on NATO aviation networks, airfields, and force presence in the region since 2017. The public naming is part of a broader Baltic trend of outing Russian intelligence operatives to degrade their cover and operational networks.
Analysis
The public naming of GRU officers, several of whom operated underdiplomatic cover before 2022, is part of a Baltic strategy to degrade Russian intelligence networks through exposure. Col. Gladkov and Ivanov, who collected NATO aviation and force presence intelligence since 2017, likely provided targeting data relevant to Russian military planning that remains operationally useful to Moscow even after their expulsion.
The public naming of GRU officers, several of whom operated under