Adversary Intelligence — 2026-07-15

Alleged Russian Spy Monitored Italian Navy Underwater Drone Exercise Off La Spezia, Two Former AISI Officers Arrested

BLUFFormal indictment of either former AISI officer remains very unlikely before mid-November, as Italian prosecutors will prioritize mapping the broader Russian contact network over rapid courtroom action.

Rome prosecutors' investigation into suspected Russian espionage produced house arrests of two former AISI officers last week 1. Il Messaggero identifies them as Raoul Gavino Piras, 59, a former Carabinieri NCO who sold a Russian Embassy contact classified material on Italy's SAMP/T air-defense program, tank munitions, and a Leonardo-built underwater drone tested off La Spezia, and Vincenzo Di Pasquale, 59, of Matera; their Russian handler was Mikhail Astakhov, a GRU officer accredited as a military attache 2. Decode39 reports a Russian national monitored a June 2025 Navy exercise involving that underwater drone off La Spezia, meeting a former intelligence officer near the port in a conversation the Carabinieri's ROS recorded 1. Di Pasquale, who served AISI until 2012, is accused of illegally accessing Italian intelligence-agency computer systems, and Rome separately expelled Astakhov and a second Russian military attache with a three-day deadline to leave 1.

Analysis
Rome prosecutors are very unlikely to move either former AISI officer to formal indictment before mid-November, since Italian espionage cases typically remain in preliminary investigation for a year or more while prosecutors trace the full contact network. That judgment carries low confidence, reflecting how little public reporting discloses about how far investigators have mapped contacts beyond the two officers already under house arrest. Reconstructed but undisclosed additional meetings between the Russian national and the former officer make further charges plausible, though each requires separate judicial authorization that lengthens the timeline. Rome's parallel expulsion of two Russian military attachés indicates the government is pursuing diplomatic retaliation alongside, not ahead of, the slower criminal process.

2 sources